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A Dartmouth 

Book of Remembrance 




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A Dartmouth 
Book of Remembrance 



Pen and Camera Sketches of Hanover and 

the College Before the Centennial 

and After 



By y 
Professor Edwin J. Bartlett, 1872 



The Webster Press 

Hanover, New Hampshire 

1922 



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Copyright — 1922 
by The Webster Press 



THE F. J. HEER PRINTING CO. 
Columbus, Ohio 

NOV 3iS22 

©C1A690867 



PREFACE 

IN JANUARY, 1904, two illustrated lectures 
were given by five of Hanover's long time 
citizens upon ''Hanover Forty Years Ago." 
The room was crowded and the interest great. 
The lectures were afterwards printed in pamphlet 
form from shorthand notes and are a mine or 
perhaps better a potato patch of homely items 
from which every citizen might dig nourishment. 
But the pamphlet is out of print; college matters 
were not the primary object of the lectures; dif- 
ferent people remember different things; some 
gleanings remain. And if excuse is needed for 
trying to take advantage of these facts, the sad 
knowledge of the passing of many of multiple 
memories and picturesque vocabularies without 
leaving any record is an incentive to lesser ones 
to do what they can or to try to do what they 
can't. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I The College 9 

II The Village 24 

III The Dartmouth Hotei 43 

IV The Old Chapel 64 

V The Burying Ground 82 

VI College Discipline 99 

VII Res Angustae llo 

VIII Teaching School 139 



I 

THE COLLEGE 

Mr. Charles P. Chase at the beginning of his 
dissertation upon the Migratory Houses of Han- 
over gives the experiences of a freshman enter- 
ing college in 1865. In 1868 the experiences 
were much the same; but this freshman came 
from Chicago by way of Montreal, and was 
aroused by the knuckles of a Pullman porter to 
crawl out upon the platform of the worst railroad 
junction at 3 A. M., about the same as now. The 
chill night air of September 3rd struck into his 
unresisting form, but his principal reaction was 
the awe of the dweller in a flat country at the 
surrounding mountains. After five well-known 
hours of discomfort, an 8 o'clock train, as now, 
bore him to Hanover. The train facilities — if 
that is a proper term for them — differed little 
from those of the present time. A train 
sauntered southward about 11 A. M., and a mail 
train wandered in at any time after 2 P. M. It 
is also within memory that a train arrived from 
the south an hour or so after midnight. Unless 
he can prove an alibi on that particular morning, 
I shall assert that Ira B. Allen himself met me 
with a Concord coach and drove me up that most 
discouraging hill and set me down hungry and 
homesick near the old Dartmouth Hotel. Later 
I may make remarks upon this institution, as I 

(9) 



10 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

think my wife and I are now a majority of the 
survivors of two years of its hospitality for room 
and board. 

Ira Allen and his wife I knew better later when 
he had a baked apple face and was rather poddy. 
Mrs. Allen's voice I often heard regulating affairs 




The Dreary Entrance 

at the stable, but she was a good woman and many 
are the times, in the days of much use of the 
extraordinarily cheap stable, when, as I paid my 
little livery bill, she would slip me back 50c or 
so with the statement that the remainder of the 
cash was plenty. Ira was inclined to somnolence 
in his later days, but was capable of peppery lan- 
guage on occasion. One of the utterances upon 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 11 

which rested his reputation as a local humorist 
was when good Dr. Leeds sought to bring him 
into the fold and make of him a regular attendant 
at the meeting-house; *'Well, Doctor," he said, ''if 
I'm not there don't you wait, but go right ahead 
with the services," And speaking of Dr. Leeds 




The Joyful Outlet 

and the former blank white rear wall of the 
church, Mrs. Susan Brown, who was not one to 
speak lightly of the minister, said that when he 
was in the pulpit he looked like a fly in a pan of 
milk. 

After refreshment, a cousin who had one year's 
advantage of me took me in charge and I did those 
things which were becoming to a freshman, visit- 



12 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

ing those kindly Profs, in their studies, and pass- 
ing all my examinations, some of them by an- 
swering inquiries concerning my father's health 
and if I hadn't come a good way to go to college. 
However, I was prepared to enter, so what dif- 
ference did it make ? 

This was fifty-four years ago. Compare the 
College now and then by means of cold facts, the 
reader furnishing the other side of the parallel 
column. The total enrollment of the College that 
fall was 370. Fifty-three were from without New 
England, and of the remainder more than half 
were from New Hampshire. The list of all the 
faculty including non-resident medical lecturers 
was 28, of whom one, the Dean Emeritus, now 
survives. The "Academic" faculty numbered 14, 
with the addition of one non-resident lecturer. 
There were 261 "Academies." The catalog of the 
time gives Departments — Medical, Academic, 
Chandler Scientific, Agricultural. These were all 
distinct and separate in instruction and admin- 
istration. The Agricultural Department was the 
New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the 
Mechanic Arts with a separate Board of Trustees. 
It had just started up with a Junior class of 10 
but no faculty of its own. The Thayer School 
had been founded but not yet put in operation. 

The buildings were the old row, Wentworth, 
Dartmouth, Thornton and Reed, the Observatory 
and the Chandler Building, with the gymnasium 
(now the home of the Thayer School) which had 
been in use something over a year. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 18 

Under the name of South Hall the College of- 
fered the Old Hotel (where is now the Currier 
Block) to ''indigent" Freshmen, at $7.50 a year 
for each one of two in a room. Although the ac- 






South Hall, the Home of Eleven '72 Freshmen 



commodations were as indigent as their oc- 
cupants, life in the old barrack had many joys. 

There were no ''snap" electives because there 
were no electives of any kind. Every one in the 
Academic Department studied the same things 
if he studied at all. And if sitting beside the 
same men for four years and unitedly learning 
how each professor manipulated his cards and 



14 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

applied the marking scale had its disadvantages, 
it also had advantages which will never come 
again. That scale was a wonder: 1 was perfect; 
5 was absolute zero; and as it was worked the 
average marks of the first third of the class 
seldom got any nearer 5 than 1.30. Greek ap- 
peared as mental pabulum in nine of the 12 terms, 
and Latin in 8, and what was the matter with the 
other 3 or 4 terms I can not tell. The Calculus, 
differential and integral, was required, and 
imagination supplies the sequel. A year or two 
later a faculty who evidently could not live up to 
their stern responsibilities made a course in 
French "optional" with the Calculus. 

The college modernist will be surprised, per- 
haps incredulous, when I tell him that among 
the early exhibits to the freshmen were the ''class 
leaders" (in scholarship). There would be little 
appreciation today of the joke much enjoyed 
around the College, that when old Spuds was 
asked by Professor Parker what ''ambrosia" 
meant, he replied "the hair oil of the gods" ; nor 
that Percy was called "Spondee" because he had 
two long feet. When some flippant youth read- 
ing Horace to Professor Parker translated "sim- 
plex munditiis" "neat but not gaudy" that good 
man with a smile and lingering loving accent re- 
peated, "simplex munditiis, simple in her ele- 
gance, a motto for every young lady's toilet, and 
every young gentleman's too for that matter," 
ending with a gentle chuckle. And that is about 
as near to censure as he ever came. The constant 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 15 

use of a word with so definite a technical meaning 
as ''alibi" for ''excuse" would have jarred many 
of us, and even now some of us object to the re- 
current journalistic use of "aphasia" as loss of 
memory. 

The United Fraternity, known as Fraters, and 
the Social Friends were still active organizations, 
and all freshmen were assigned to one or the 
other by alphabetical alternation. Thus they 
kicked football upon the Campus to avoid the ex- 
cessive tension of the Old Division (often called 
Whole Division) game, which was Seniors and 
Sophomores vs. Juniors and Freshmen. These 
societies possessed libraries of nearly 9000 
volumes each, and gave occasion for lively politics, 
since the librarians were elected, drew salaries 
and appointed assistants. They united in an 
"Exhibition" just before Thanksgiving at which 
our most talented seniors showed the world what 
real poems and orations were. 

There was also an official "Junior Exhibition" 
in April at which the smart lads of the class 
spoke pieces. This festival was made the oc- 
casion of the distribution of mock programs sup- 
posed to be the work of Sophomores, who were, 
however, aided and abetted by the Seniors. These 
were usually of an indelicate, coarse, smutty, 
foetid, pornographic nature, if you know what I 
mean. And as detection of the author meant im- 
mediate extinction so far as college was con- 
cerned, they were printed and circulated in 
deepest secrecy. The most decent, I remember, 



16 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

announced that the procession would be headed 
by President Smith riding on a cow, and that he 
could be distinguished from the cow by his spec- 
tacles. That so kindly a gentleman as President 
Smith should be thus derided merely illustrates 
the extent to which an alleged joke sometimes 
befogs the youthful mind. I confess that I have 
a number of these programs carefully put away. 
Some remain from the distributions of half a 
century ago and some have been sent me by 
friends who doubtless feared to be caught with 
the goods upon them. As peculiar historical 
documents I have hated to destroy them ; but hav- 
ing confessed so much I will further affirm that 
I never saw any of them until they had been 
printed and circulated. 

The College library then numbered about 17,000 
volumes and was as carefully guarded as the 
United States Mint. 

Perhaps I can avoid the usual class egotism by 
mentioning only a few items of college life and 
those either obsolete now or unusual at the time. 

In the early days of the term we Freshmen 
were notified to be on hand at a ''Shirt-tail" to be 
held some time after the witching hour of mid- 
night. The custom has survived in a form as 
attenuated as is the length of pa jama jackets to 
that of the ancient garment. A distinguished 
New York doctor and I, with Freshman simplic- 
ity, prepared our lessons together for the follow- 
ing day (lectures in those days were few, and we 
recited) with full intention of being among those 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 17 

present, but the sandman overpowered our youth- 
ful eyes and we went off to our beds. The affair 
was highly obnoxious to the faculty, since it de- 
veloped into a tin-horn serenade of a professor 
who had been married during the summer — the 
only case of the kind I have known in the College. 
Missiles were flung and bad language used, as the 
mob spirit prevailed. 

Of that host of white-robed outlaws two 
seniors and one freshman, conspicuous by a 
pumpkin jack-o-lantern, were apprehended. It 
was the fate of the freshman to be separated from 
recitations for a period, though remaining in resi- 
dence. The seniors were condemned to ''rustica- 
tion," that is exiled to a selected place and tutor. 
The tutor in these cases was usually a country 
minister, and the exile was not so forlorn. Rural 
society did not look severely upon college esca- 
pades, and it is well known that out of New Eng- 
land villages have come many of the country's 
brightest and best. 

I think these were the only victims of justice, 
which was considered a huge joke around college; 
but I suppose a great deal of college discipline has 
to go this way. 

The fraternity question was quickly and easily 
settled. They held ''menageries" in those days, 
which were more like the after-meetings of a re- 
vival season than anything else. The fraternities 
were Psi Upsilon, Kappa Kappa Kappa, Alpha 
Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon. A worthy 
2 



18 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

little group who were in some way overlooked 
established Theta Delta Chi, so that all the class 
were gathered in, except two or three who stayed 
out for religious or economic reasons. Another 
fraternity was established a little later and the 
Aegis wisely remarked that the College now had 
all that it could support. 

These were the days when flourished the Fresh- 
man societies, Kappa Sigma Epsilon and Delta 
Kappa. With our eyes tightly bandaged and in 
lock-step we marched into the hall of torture. 
The attendant demons who had been in college a 
year longer greeted us with dreadful moans and 
howls in sepulchral — I suppose sepulchral — voices 
and occasional articulate warnings like ''Fresh- 
man bewaaaare." I had been bidden by friendly 
Sophomores to be of good heart as my body would 
not be mutilated beyond recognition. As a matter 
of fact most of us were not mussed up at all, 
though we had to place our hands on an iron mitt, 
which might have been red-hot but was not, to 
take the dreadful oath. A few lewd fellows of 
the baser sort having their victims blindfold and 
helpless took the opportunity to imbed pins deeply 
in the well-cushioned parts of certain freshmen 
who had been blacklisted as too blatant, and to 
administer sly pinches, and upon one they poured 
water through a dirty stove-pipe, but there was 
little ingenuity of torture in the proceedings. 
These societies maintained debates and other 
literary exercises for a part of the year, and 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 19 

initiation into the fraternities took place a short 
time before Commencement. 

In the fall too we had a bad example set us 
by a rebellion of '69, the senior class. Two of 
that class were suspended for an affair that does 
not seem at the present time a capital offense; 
and at the 11 o'clock recitation hour the class as- 
sembled in front of the Old Chapel with carriage 
and music and escorted the exiles to the station. 
According to my recollection, Harry Smith, son 
of the President, who was in a difficult relation, 
and another of marked and independent disposi- 
tion attended the recitation, noble but lonesome. 
Then followed suspension of all the truants, great 
excitement, mass meetings in which eloquence was 
unsuccessfully used to persuade the whole college 
to join in a sympathetic strike, the resolution of 
the whole senior class to shake off the dust, let- 
ters from parents, sober second thoughts, then 
gradual, later rapid, return of the whole class in 
apologetic mood to their duties. This might open 
a discussion of college discipline, but will not. It 
may be observed that some disciplinary actions 
are inevitable and indisputable, while others, 
from the point of view of twenty-one, are open 
to argument and must not be executed summarily. 

I forbear to tell how Worthen, later called 
Tute, carried a cane to chapel and on demand 
properly surrendered it to President Smith, or of 
the gigantic struggles with '71, because such 
matters are in some form a precious remembrance 
of all classes and a bore to all the others. 



20 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

But in this sketch which is static rather than 
progressive, a cross section rather than a pan- 
orama, I can give an exact view of our athletics 
at the time. 

There were legends of rowing, rumors of 
rowing to come, but the second advent of rowing 
really occurred about five years later. Paddling 
on the river there was, for canoes had been in- 
vented some years earlier. 

Intercollegiate baseball was a feeble plant and 
the games were few and casual. A little rudi- 
mentary Aegis for 25 cents announces editorially 
in what was thought to be a tone of discourage- 
ment and bitterness, 'Tor sale, nine gray uni- 
forms. The owners are sold already." But it 
was a grand era for the intramural game; five 
and even six games often raged at once upon the 
campus and that same Aegis and others enrolled 
ten or twelve organized ''nines" of one kind and 
another, besides those that merely played and 
howled. 

At that time the pitcher was restricted to a 
straight arm underhand pitch, but he was only 
45 feet from the batter and was allowed nine 
balls. Runners were not allowed to overrun 1st 
base; fouls counted for nothing unless they were 
caught in the air or on the first bound. Only 
babies wore gloves : that is, they were not worn. 
Catchers had neither mask nor chest protector. 
The catcher played up to the bat after the second 
strike or, if he was pretty nervy, when there was 
a runner on the bases. Every catcher received 




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22 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

one or more foul tips on his features during the 
season. I have a photograph now of my class 
nine in which the catcher exposes his profile in 
order to conceal a scrambled eye. As the ball 
was hard and lively and hit with all the violence 
of brawny men, baseball was somewhat more an 
heroic adventure than at present. 

Football was simplicity itself. You ran all over 
the campus, and when, as, and if you got a chance 
you kicked a round rubber ball to the east or to 
the west. You might run all the afternoon and 
not get your toe upon the ball, but you could not 
deny that you had had a fair chance, and the 
exercise was yours and could be valued by the 
number of hot rolls consumed at the evening meal. 
The game was played by two or by two hundred. 
You always knew in which direction to kick be- 
cause you were bound to know whether you were 
a Frater or a Social. The game could be played 
half an hour or all the afternoon; some dropped 
out, others dropped in. It was especially adapted 
to the half-hour between 12 when recitations 
closed and 12 :30 when the dinner bell rang. It 
was glorious for exercise, and had enough excite- 
ment to make it highly interesting. It gave ample 
opportunity for competitions in speed, finesse, 
dodging, endurance, and occasional personal colli- 
sions. For a year the faculty in its inscrutable 
wisdom debarred this highly useful game because 
of abuses, as they thought, in the manner of 
playing it. In my junior year I was one of a 
committee sent by the College to ask the President 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 23 

please couldn't we play the game again if we 
would be good ; and he, after taking counsel, said 
yes. 

Croquet, affected by seniors in their last term, 
was regarded as effeminate, but from the lan- 
guage occasionally overheard it may have been 
a virile game after all. 

There was always walking, and plenty of it. 

For most the winter was a rather close season. 
Instead of the toboggan the snowshoe and the ski, 
the ''double runner" dashed down the hilly roads 
which lead outward from the village in each di- 
rection. I suspect that coasting on the roads was 
unlawful, but it was done ; and there was nothing 
tame about it in going down nor easy about it in 
going up. The writer has done all the hills in- 
cluding Balch's, though part of that was rolling. 

Hockey was played when there was good ice 
upon the river, but under the name of "shinney." 
There was no pond where is now ''Faculty pond" 
or "Occom pond." Many years ago a pond must 
have been there, but it had become undammed. 
The present pond was recovered by a dam thrown 
across in 1899. 



II 

THE VILLAGE 

The impression which the village of Hanover 
made on a freshman in 1868 was permanent, but 
it was deepened on his return ten years later to 
the same village almost unchanged in the interval. 
A remote rural hamlet of the 18th century it was. 
On consideration, it is remote now — almost the 
most remote place in New England by measure 
of geography and railway connections, but it has 
lost somewhat its scenic fitness for a moving 
picture of the ''Elegy in a Country Churchyard." 
The entrance over the Ledyard Bridge and up the 
hill suggested the familiar ''Let him who enters 
here leave hope behind." West Wheelock street, 
of course without church or fraternity houses, 
was the abode of staid householders glad of the 
financial increment from renting rooms to 
students. President Smith lived in the house now 
occupied by Mr. Randall. And I shall never for- 
get the hospitable house of President Brown, 
wherein I ate my first Hanover supper and 
cheered up. It stood on the site of College Hall, 
facing south; later it tripped over to East 
Wheelock street and became the home of Dr. C. 
P. Frost; and now the Chi Phi Fraternity has it. 
The little brick building occupied by the Stock- 
bridge Association was the whole and only school- 
house. Webster avenue was not laid out and 

(24) 




CO 



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26 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

there were no buildings to the northwest of its 
present location. There were only two or three 
little houses in the region northerly from May- 
nard street, and these later gave way to the 
Hospital. There were no houses on Park street, 
and the southeast and southwest corners of the 
village had not yet been filled in. 

There were walks by the sides of the road, but 
no sidewalks, and in the spring rubber boots were 
both genteel and necessary. Everyone wore them, 
and if invited to a party one might with propriety 
take along slippers in a bag. A few kerosene 
lamps made the darkness of night visible, but the 
wise citizen traveled about the streets guided by 
his own lantern. The only water supplies were 
the heavens directly into cisterns, and spring 
water coming from over the hill towards Lebanon 
in a lead main of about 11/2 inches caliber, dis- 
tributed in ''shares" by a perpetually running 
pin-hole stream, and stored in an alcohol barrel or 
a cement cistern. A share for a family was about 
40 gallons a day. This seems ample to the un- 
calculating, and it would be ample if the family 
drank it all; but the average use and waste of 
water today is 80 to 100 gallons per individual. 
The head was enough to force the stream to the 
ground floor and no higher. There were a few 
larger reservoirs at some of the street corners 
for fire purposes, but under the circumstances 
when a house took fire it was expected to burn to 
the ground. The college buildings were supplied 
from a well on the campus not far from the north 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 27 

door of Reed Hall, — supplied, that is, when the 
pitcher went to the well and came back safely. 
And, it is true, as rumored, that cuspidors, then 
called spittoons, were washed on the pervious 
boards that covered the well. Naturally precau- 
tions against excessive application of water to the 
bare skin were not necessary. I have it on good 
living authority that when John Doe, who roomed 
in Thornton, announced v/ith pride and perhaps 
some trepidation that he was heating water for 
a bath, a half-dozen or so of his more intimate 
friends gathered to make sure that there was no 
evasion of the unusual function. At about this 
time one house in the village was equipped with 
a force pump and a regular bathroom, but it was 
regarded as a dubious luxury and caused much 
comment. 

There is reason to think that there was talk 
anyway. One of the subjects of debate was 
whether it was at any time proper for a woman 
to walk across the campus, and if so, when. 
Much later some of the more frivolous members 
of the faculty took up tennis, and capered around 
after a dressed-up rubber ball. After serious dis- 
cussion it was allowed that if they would not wear 
outlandish clothes that showed their legs perhaps 
they could play the game without too much loss 
of dignity. This was in the period when min- 
isters, teachers and fathers were yet required ''to 
set a good example." And (with a little latitude 
of time) students wearing neat green knicker- 
bockers were debarred from some recitation 



^8 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

rooms. I have a mental, I wish it were photo- 
graphic, picture of an afterward-distinguished 
son of Dartmouth attending church service in a 
stove-pipe hat, a swallow-tailed coat, knee 
breeches and long white hose, nevertheless. An 
older resident inquired of a new comer in a 
cautious whisper, '*Do you ever do such a thing 
as play cards?" There are members of my class 
who will always believe that the reason why the 
gas went out at our graduating reception (for in 
1872 there was a kind of gas) was to suppress 
in a polite manner a little indiscriminate dancing 
which had spontaneously developed. 

The campus, as everyone knows, was fenced. 
It yielded a fair crop of hay just before Com- 
mencement and a scant rowan before the opening 
of the fall term. This was a period, too, when 
the surrounding rural population as well as peri- 
patetic fakers, mountebanks and hucksters con- 
tinued to take great interest in Commencement, 
maintaining a lusty midway plaisance, on a small 
scale, at the south end of the campus, outside the 
fence. And the custom early noted here of the 
lads and lasses wandering about hand-in-hand 
was not yet obsolete. 

There were no sewers in the place, and drainage 
was into cesspools or upon the surface of the 
ground. Why mention a gruesome matter so re- 
mote from culture? But culture cannot be sepa- 
rated from material conditions. The drainage 
and the drinking water and the culture were con- 
tinually getting mixed, especially in the fall of 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 29 

the year; and the Bacillus Typhosis flourished 

like the green bay tree. One hundred cases of 

typhoid was, I believe, the record in one season. 

Fever suggests doctors. The medical lectures 




Main St., East Side, Looking North 

began early in August and continued till about 
the first of November bringing a number of dis- 
tinguished specialists to the village for the period 
of their lectures; but resident physicians were 
few. Before we had finished our course Dr. 
Carlton P. Frost had come here to live; but from 
the beginning I can remember only Dr. ''Ben" 



30 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Crosby, who, I think, did not spend all his time 
here, and Dr. Dixi Crosby, an old man then, who 
lived in the Crosby House. I had occasion to 
consult him twice, — once for an obstinate case 




Main St., West Side, Looking North 



of ivy poisoning, for which I remember he pre- 
scribed ''Goulard's extract," purchasable at 
Deacon Downing's pharmacy, and once for a very 
painful felon in the palm of the hand, starting 
from a baseball bruise. After exhausting the 
"soft answer," that is "mush" (poultices), he re- 
sorted to the steel; upon which silence, for 
rhetorical effect. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 31 

Eating clubs had much more of the club-like 
nature than at present. A ''commissary" se- 
cured members and supervised accounts; a work- 
ing housekeeper, for a fixed sum per mouth 
filled — about 50c a week — provided room, fur- 
nishings, and cooking; waiters served for their 
board; and the cost of the food was assessed. It 
was possible to eat with a fair chance of sustain- 
ing life for $2.50 a week without tea or coffee; 
and the maximum of nutritive and gustatory 
luxury could be enjoyed for $4.25 to $4.50. It 
was, however, as it is now, largely a matter of 
hasty stoking-up regardless of the refining and 
esthetic infiuence of feeding under gentle and 
social conditions ; and it produced a class of hasty 
gobblers with whom it is impossible for civilized 
eaters to keep pace. The breakfast menu, to con- 
quer which has always been a race against time, 
was, to the best of my memory, one slab of alleged 
beefsteak, one piping hot baked potato, as many 
hot rolls as time permitted, and as a staple the 
pale anemic raised doughnut, shrewdly con- 
structed without the sugar which in the hot fat 
develops the rich caramel color of the true or 
mother's variety, but which was soaked in or 
washed down by huge draughts of sugar-sat- 
urated coffee. The bills of fare for the rest of 
the day are less vivid now, a little more varied 
it is true, but based on the theory of substance 
before art, and favoring the adolescent hankering 
for milk and then some more milk, and pie. 

My memory about ardent spirits — the demon 




=5 



I 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 33 

rum, or good red liquor, as you prefer — is 
vague. I know a decent-appearing, white-haired 
grandpa, rightly called ''Judge" by many, who 
tells how, when a thirsty soul from the suburbs 
came inquiring around where he could get it, they 
directed him with care and secrecy to the house 
of Dr. Leeds; and he, the teller, chuckles over it 
yet. 

I suppose that at the glacial period under con- 
sideration some coal came into Hanover, but if 
that was the case I never knew it. All the 
furnaces I knew burned wood and were bad 
actors. They smoked, as did none of the faculty. 
The stove was the fire king. And there were two 
kinds of stoves — the ''airtight," with side 
entrance, used in homes, one in each inhabited 
room, and the box or rectangular stove appro- 
priate to recitation rooms and railway stations, 
stoked by lifting a hinged top that often slipped 
with great clatter, especially during recitations. 
The reliable old air-tight delivered the goods. It 
was adapted to slow over-night carbonization or 
to immediate incandescence which would raise 
the temperature of an ordinary room to 90° while 
you were breaking the ice in the water pitcher. 
And the anti-tuberculous distillate of creosote, 
far more wholesome than the sulphur-bearing 
coal gas, is reminiscent in many Hanover houses 
to the present day. Good rock maple wood was 
abundant, and after sawing and splitting was 
carefully stored away before nightfall ; for it was 



34 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

one of those commodities which from time to time 
inherit a fashion of vanishing away, like um- 
brellas, house numbers, garments from the 
clothes-line, turkeys, text-books, and so forth, 
each in turn. Often on the winter afternoons 
four or five ox teams, the sleds loaded with **four- 
foot" wood, stood in the street near the hotel, and 
as darkness approached and sales were slow, the 
price for a cord came down to $3.75 or even $3.50 
so that the driver might get home in time to do 
the chores. 

The houses were migratory as has been told; 
and in further illustration of the slight union of 
buildings and their sites — from the Inn to the 
Bank only two lots are occupied by the buildings 
of 1868, that of the express office, and of the 
dwelling beyond; while on the other side of the 
street, from and including the Administration 
building to the little chapel of St. Thomas' 
Church, only two others, **Uncle Jo" Emerson's 
occupied by the Casque and Gauntlet and the 
Walker house across the lane from the post office, 
now remain. And everywhere the material prog- 
ress of the College has been attended by houses 
on wheels playing "Puss-in-the-Corner," or houses 
in wagons traveling to the salvage heap. 

The 'Tontine," besides serving as a business 
center, was the home of several fraternities — 
six at the time of its destruction by fire in 1887. 
I can speak only for my own, quartered in a high 
and dignified room extending from front to rear 
of the building and provided with ante-room and 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 35 

'*giiard-room." Here we gathered to supplement 
the meager curriculum with debates, ''conversa- 
tions," book reviews, essays and the reading of 
plays. The old ways are neither possible nor 
necessary now. Fellowship and hospitality have 
taken the place of earnestness in self-improve- 
ment; but no alumni can look back on their 
fraternity life with warmer affection than those 
of that period. How we fed on the wisdom of 
the great minds a year or so ahead of us! And 
how we sung, with devilish glee, even so wanton 
a song as 'Then when our little ones come on. 
We'll brand them all Psi Upsilon," evidently to 
the encouragement of legacies. And once a year, 
at the initiation feast, came forth the unwonted 
cigar to be cautiously burned perhaps near an 
open window. Those enjoying the usufruct of 
scholarship funds at the expense of the "iron 
clad" pledge agreed with Rip Van Winkle that 
"this time does not count." 

No one can speak with accuracy of Hanover's 
business men from the impressions of a fresh- 
man; but "the street" in 1868 had little of its 
present complexity. Dean today of all the mer- 
chants, George W. Rand had arrived in December, 
1865, which is close after the Civil War; and long 
may he continue. Deacon Downing came soon 
after and was genially presiding over a little 
pharmacy in a wooden building about where 
Storrs' bookstore is now. Fruit was one of the 
scarcest articles in Hanover, and upon the 
Deacon's counter stood a wire basket of at- 



36 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

tractive apples a penny each, or, if you did not 
pick the largest, six for five cents. Newton S. 
Huntington had organized the National bank, and 
was also carrying on a savings bank which had 
been started by Elder Richardson. The Frarys 
and their ever-to-be-remembered tavern held im- 
portant place in the community. In Cobb's gen- 
eral store you could buy anything, if Mr. Cobb, 
who did not like to be bothered, or his clerk, could 
find it. Clough & Storrs ran another general 
store. Later E. P. Storrs, long one of Hanover's 
most respected citizens, took over the Dartmouth 
Bookstore from N. A. McClary and carried it on 
for many years. E. D. Carpenter made good 
clothes, and Ballou, a dashing young blade, helped 
him. "Bill" Gibbs also tailored. I cannot recall 
that metropolitan houses had yet discovered that 
Dartmouth students had money to spend. How 
could they when two-thirds or more of them were 
teaching school twelve weeks in the winter at 
from $40 to $60 a month paying board, and at 
$25 and upwards ''boarding around"? Parker 
had the bookstore, and Major Wainwright the tin 
shop, for there wasn't much plumbing. M. M. 
Amaral came about this time, though the inven- 
tion of Para Caspa was yet to come. P. H. Whit- 
comb ran the printing office, and it was believed 
around college that the correction of an error in 
proof resulted in two errors in the revise. On 
press days Whitcomb used man power and it was 
also reputed that the long and lank John Suse 
was the only man in Hanover strong enough to 



S8 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

furnish it. Smith's bakery had been in Hanover 
many years, and Smith, it is said, first brought 
anthracite coal into Hanover. It was H. 0. Bly 
who took the pictures, and as business was not 
always pressing he was closely associated with a 
pipe and a bench outside his door. Dr. James 
Newton, in the Phi Gamma Delta House, pulled 
and replaced teeth ; and his parlor was a center 
of amateur music, although in that respect there 
was no connection between vocation and avoca- 
tion. Of course Ira Allen supplied the equine 
transportation. Once, summoned from the street 
to witness a legal paper, I visited the chaotic lair 
of Squire Duncan, over Cobb's store. He was 
then ancient beyond my youthful comprehension. 
I knew him much better ten years later. 

I must give a special paragraph to Jason Dud- 
ley, whose era was from 1812 to 1893. 

In his early days he was chief engineer of a 
stage coach and once drove my father into Han- 
over. At a later time my father recalled it and 
complimented Jason on the safe completion of 
the journey, to which Jason responded '*You 
never said a truer thing in any of your sermons 
than that." 

His real joy he found in his chosen profession 
— driver of the Hanover hearse — of which he 
took the broadest view. One of Hanover's bril- 
liant daughters, Mildred Crosby Lindsay, has 
given me some of her recollections. Mrs. Lindsay 
writes, '*I think all names but the Crosbys' should 
be suppressed. No Crosby was ever sensitive 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 39 

about a good story." And reluctantly I accept 
her judgment — for the most part. Mrs. Ed- 
wards, in the cemetery arranging for the inter- 
ment of her aged aunt, Mrs. Johns, said, ''I 
think, Mr. Dudley, that by placing auntie's head 
this way by uncle's feet you could make room for 
her and for a small headstone." ''Well, Miss Ed- 
wards, this aint no sardine packin' factory, and 
while I am the head of this cem'tery heads will 
match heads or the old woman won't be planted," 
replied Jason, and the matter was settled. 

And Mrs. Edwards in eulogy of the uncle, the 
elegant Professor Johns, declared, *'It was a great 
loss to the college, and the village, when he paid 
the debt to nature." ''Well, I swan," roared 
Jason, "if he paid the debt to nature it was the 
fust debt he ever paid; old Duncan never could 
see how he kept out of jail." 

Meeting one day the healthy collector of these 
sayings, who has survived him many years, he 
said cheerfully, "I done some measuring down to 
your lot today and if we bury you in the north 
corner of the lot in the curve where we calculated 
to, your legs will be part in the highway. We 
was lottin' on your bein' short like your mother, 
but you got one of those figgers that nothin' stops 
your waist but your heels." 

He said deacon Jacobs was considerable of a 
jellyfish with the ladies. He added that he under- 
stood there was something on his tombstone about 
his thinking more about God than he did about 
his food. "By gorry, the man that wrote that 



40 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

never see the deacon eat good victuals," was his 
emphatic comment. 

When elder Charles, a paralytic, died Jason 
said, '*We all ought to jine in singing 'Thou art 
gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee !' " 

Reflecting upon the effect of a great granite 
stone placed over the grave of Dr. Asa Crosby, 
he said to Mrs. Lindsay's father. Dr. Ben Crosby, 
**Asa will be some late for the Resurrection, and 
it is a pity for he is the one Crosby you can count 
on gittin' in." One day when Jason had the 
funeral horse in the buggy and was giving his 
young friend a ride, he flicked the sedate beast 
with the whip and caused it to trot. His com- 
panion protested that this might unfit the animal 
for its more serious duties. ^'Mildred," said 
Ja;£on, ''don't you suppose that horse knows the 
difference between you and a corpse?" 

Dr. Ben Crosby, a noted after-dinner speaker, 
much younger than Jason, once introduced him 
at the Century Club in New York as a prince of 
story tellers and his own greatly feared rival. 
When Jason rose to respond he relieved the doc- 
tor's fears thus: "Don't be a mite scared, Ben; 
dog don't eat puppy in the class I've travelled 
with." 

There must be a limit to the space that can be 
given to this quaint person. Said he, "I never 
seed your grandmother consarned mad but jest 
twice; once when they was rowin' about the 
bridge and arrested the old doctor and put him 
in jail over at Woodstock; and he sent a man 




J3 
bo 



bfl 

o 

o 



42 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

clear over from Woodstock to break it gently to 
his grass-widder. And the man said, 'Don't be 
askin' for your husband, Mum, for they have 
jailed the old fool in Woodstock, and as far as I 
am concerned I hope the old New Hampshire idiot 
will stay there' ; and the other time was when 
she got all ready for a big family funeral — 
cakes, mince pies, ham, calves' head soups, etc., 
and I myself had fetched the coffin stands up and 
she met me at the door, mad clear through; *Mr. 
Dudley,' says she, 'there will be no funeral ; the 
corpse has rallied.' " 



Ill 

THE DARTMOUTH HOTEL 

As I consult my trusty and life-saving account 
book I see that in the autumn of 1879 we entered 
upon a two years' term in the Dartmouth Hotel, 
at the price of $12 a week. It cannot be claimed 
that this was before the Centennial, but the con- 
ditions were. Things equal to each other are 
equal to the same thing ; and there can have been 
no radical change in that important institution 
since Horace Frary nominally took over its man- 
agement, according to Judge Chase, in 1857. 

I had lived there previously for some months, 
evidently in need of a guardian ; for 35 years later 
one of those sinners who show no mark of early 
crime, in the course of an agreeable call at my 
house confessed (or maybe boasted) of abstract- 
ing samples of a primitive set of examination 
questions from my room during that period. I 
could only answer meekly that I never should 
have guessed it from the papers handed in. It 
was another case of Cherchez la feynme. Charged 
with the duty of caring for my room, this person, 
whose identity I cannot recall, extended her sym- 
pathy to my classes. 

Twelve dollars a week, not for one person but 
for two — that is, to have no ambiguity, six dol- 
lars each — was the price of two rooms, one of 
them on the Green side of the house, with light, 

(43) 



44 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

heat, food, service, and such other comforts or 
joys as the house afforded, which included that 
imaginary stimulus to high thinking — plain liv- 
ing — and the right to sit around the office stove. 




The Dartmouth Hotel, 1866 

There were about eight residing guests, and as 
many more came in from without for food. 

It is difficult now to find a country hotel so free 
from the tasteful, the dainty, the homelike. One 
would almost conclude that it was planned, fur- 
nished and managed to drive its guests to homes 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 45 

of their own. It was, however, slowly moving. 
Steam heat had been introduced, which gave op- 
portunity to point with pride for at least a 
decade. 

The building consisted of two great barracks, 
the corner one of brick, the inner of wood, joined 
in the middle and deeply recessed between. The 
office and the lobby were approximately where 
are those of the present Inn. The dining room 
was long and narrow and dark, with two windows 
opening on the alley in the rear and two on the 
ever bleak recess between the two buildings. It 
had a blue-painted floor, chairs of the fashion 
called ''kitchen, " long three-feet tables, and an 
austere regimen. At the front of the wooden 
building on the ground floor was a huge room 
called the store room. Here in earlier times was 
spread the alumni dinner, and sometimes it was 
a place for entertainments. One summer when 
many young people were in town, Gilbert and 
Sullivan's "Patience" was rehearsed and pre- 
sented in it with the usual trials and triumphs 
of amateur performances, well worth while. Into 
the older half the steam heat had been introduced 
with huge painted radiators, flat and indented, 
which knocked and hammered like riveting ma- 
chines and met emergencies so poorly, partly 
through lack of fuel — there was no parsimony 
about it but some one went to sleep when he 
should have been firing up — that dwellers in 
that part of the house were often fain to come and 



46 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

sit by the old reliable air-tight where it was 
warm. 

The hall up stairs was a letter H, the cross-bar 
running east and west. It was cut by a door and 
all but the western arm was unheated in the 
winter. The rooms were spacious. There was 
no plumbing in the house. It was possible for 
the guests to keep clean, but not by getting into 
a tub. One can only hint at the seasonal discom- 
forts of summer and winter.* 

The proprietor, Horace, better known as 
**Hod," was of silvery locks, soft speech, and 
saintly appearance. I have no disposition to con- 
trovert those who ascribe to him great power in 
supervigorous language. There are too many 
citations, though there is monotony in the quot- 
able ones. He tore down the porch on the Main 
Street side of the house because, it is reported, 
''those damned students made so much noise that 
he could not sleep." He was ailing and his wife 
suggested that Dr. Frost should be summoned. 
''Damn it," said Hod, "this is no time to be send- 
ing for a doctor. Fm sick." In his last illness, 
with failing breath he struggled for speech ; Mrs. 
Frary bent a kindly listening ear, "Did you want 
to say something, Horace?" And "You make 
that damned old * * * pay his bill," were 
his last words. These are the stories. However, 



* This building was complete!}' destroyed by fire in January. 
1887. The hotel which succeeded it, built and owned by the 
College, was called "The Wheelock," and the Wheelock some- 
what reconstructed is the present Hanover Inn. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 47 

during two years of association with him I heard 
very few words from him, and none that were 
not befitting a perfect gentleman. I did not hear 
what he said when his peculiar and uncertain 
temper had been aroused, or when he stood coat- 







The Dartmouth Hotel, from N. W. Comer of the Green, later 



less and hatless in the coldest weather, at the 
tail of the meat cart bargaining for joints to feed 
people who never stayed fed longer than over 
night. 

Mr. Frary took the Boston Joiirrial as others 
took alcohol or stimulating drugs. As he read it 
he growled and muttered, grew violently excited, 



48 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

and finally flung the paper as far as he could 
across the room. No persuasion could induce him 
to change to a less irritating source of news. His 
behavior was far worse than that of the young 
miss of Black Bay, 

"Whose conduct was very blase ; 
While yet in her teens 
She refused pork and beans, 
And once threw a Transcript away." 

Yes, he carved, very skilfully, in his shirt 
sleeves, and with his back towards the pensioners. 
Knowing the legend, we watched furtively and 
anxiously to discover whether he did wipe either 
his nose or his knife on his vest. The verdict was 
**not proven, but change your vest." 

There was a clerk whose name was not Rufus, 
hard worked and reluctant. Perhaps the greatest 
sorrow of his life was having to sell six five-cent 
see-gars for a quarter. Next to that was the 
grievance of letting anyone into the house after 
10 p. m. 

But whatever Hod or the clerk whose name was 
not Rufus may have done or have been in the 
stable, the lobby, or the street, the autocrat of the 
breakfast table and all the tables was Mrs. Frary, 
whose given but unused name was Amelia; and 
she maintained her authority by constant 
presence, eagle vision, disconcertingly acute hear- 
ing, a far-carrying voice that never missed, and 
a firm conviction that she was responsible not 
only for our nutrition but also for our manners 
and morals. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 49 

Very tall and very spare and very straight and 
very angular, with a neat brown-haired head- 
covering about which there was no deception (un- 
less there were two) curving from a broad part- 
ing low to the ears, and with slippers always down 
at the heel, she shuffled rhythmically from one end 




A Nearer View 

of the room to the other bearing food, supervis- 
ing, warning, commanding, seldom comforting. 
Her thin face with its down-curving lines was al- 
ways serious. If you ventured to jest, an ap- 
preciative gleam would come into her eyes, and 
if she was in very amiable mood she would let it 
go without comment; on less favorable days she 
would repeat and dissect it in a loud clear flat 



50 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

voice to the intense but suppressed delight of 
every one in the dining-room except the joker. 

George Eliot declares that a difference of taste 
in jokes is a great strain on the affections. The 
autocrat had her own taste. Did you especially 
object to the flavor of sage you might hear her 
compelling voice, ''Give him plenty of the turkey 
stuffing, Angelina." She nearly reduced a mother 
to tears by commenting loudly on the inebriated 
condition in which the mother's son came in the 
night before, and she continued the subject at 
intervals for a week, though every one knew that 
while late the young man was not drunk. Early 
one July morning a small new boarder came into 
the house. This Mrs. Frary announced to the 
breakfasting boarders by the remark in her long 
range voice to relatives of the debutante, ''It was 
rather frosty early this morning, wasn't it?" A 
stranger demanded a bath and his case was re- 
ferred to Mrs. Frary and disposed of thus, "You 
want a bath? Didn't you see the river when you 
came up from the depot?" 

And you were expected to eat what she allotted 
to you. You asked for bread and she was likely 
to shuffle over to you and inquire, always in the 
far-carrying voice, "What ails the biscuit this 
morning? I made them myself." Angelina said, 
"Pork chop, sausage, and meat and tater hash," 
and you expressed a preference for sausage, to 
hear, "Guess you better have meat and tater hash ; 
sausage might not suit you." Or you heard, 
"Hot coffee? If he wants his coffee hot he better 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 51 

come earlier to his breakfast." A veteran 
boarder requested underdone meat one day, and 
we heard from the region of the serving table, 
*'You take him back this; raw meat ain't good 
for him." A reckless traveling man actually took 
exception to the food that was brought him and 
sent it back. Our first notice of it was, ''Hey! 
what ails it?" Then taking the plate in her own 
hands she marched with flapping heels upon the 
daring man. We grasped the sides of our chairs 
and listened. ''Say, what's the matter of this? 
Aint it good enough for you?" He looked up, 
then muttered something inaudible even in the 
supernatural stillness of the room. "Well, it's the 
best we got; I suppose you needn't eat it if you 
don't want it." But he took it. Whenever she 
thus crushed an upstart, an appreciative twinkle 
lingered in her glances for a minute or two. 

Who of the time will forget the sentence of 
expulsion solemnly pronounced and executed on 
Squire Duncan, brother-in-law of Rufus Choate, 
and McClary of the bookstore, for habitual and 
incorrigible tardiness at breakfast. But they 
were almost as much fixtures of the house as Mrs. 
Frary herself, and after missing them for a week 
she changed her mind and called them back. 

When the few festal days of the College arrived 
Mrs. Frary came into her own. The great ones 
of the earth, the trustees and judges and gov- 
ernors, placed their feet under her mahogany, 
and in some instances made rapid plays with their 
knives, but there was no servility in Mrs. Frary's 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 5S 

manner, although we common feeders were made 
to see distinctly that the real thing had come 
and that the tavern was now serving its highest 
ends. "Vm getting along about as usual, judge; 
I hope your rheumatism is better." "Will you 
have meat pie or rice pudding, doctor?" "We 
have some nice haddock fish today, governor; 
shall I bring you some?" all conveyed a fine sense 
of social equality weighted with appreciation of 
their temporary alimentary dependence. (We 
never were quite clear why it was always "had- 
dock fish" that was offered, but the most pro'Aible 
theory is that the discrimination thus suggested 
was a delicate courtesy to Professor Haddock's 
aged widow who was a distinguished and stately 
boarder. Her egg, by the way, was a well-known 
feature of the breakfast, because, being deaf, she 
did not know that the tinkling as she stirred it 
in the glass was loud enough to obscure the chapel 
bell. She was a good sport, and when in the 
panicky time of the fire Mr. Henry Rood hastened 
to her rescue with the word that unless she hur- 
ried it was uncertain whether she could get out, 
she replied, "Harry Rood, I've never hurried in 
my life, and I'm not going to begin now," and 
fully dressed and composed she took his arm and 
marched through the smoke into safety.) 

But the gentler elements were mixed in Mrs. 
Frary, and if one could penetrate to the great 
clean kitchen and find her, a prudent Penelope, 
sitting with the weary flat feet in an otherwise 
vacant oven, while she regulated the maids with 



54 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

eye and voice, it might be that any request even 
to cake or oysters in the evening would be 
granted. If, as sometimes happened, a genuine 
liking for some boarding lady took hold of her, 
that one might even come into the kitchen and 
make things, or have toast at supper. She was 
a constant friend to the poor; and impecunious 
boarders touched her sympathy, especially if the 
bill was old and large. That baby born on the 
frosty summer morning fetched her, and for the 
only known time in two years she climbed the 
stairs all the way from the first to the second 
floor to pay a visit and to see her have her bath. 
The food materials were generally good. The 
chef was about average Yankee, neither best nor 
worst. Options in food were not much en- 
couraged. There were certain memorable fixtures 
— fish on Friday, baked beans and brown bread 
Saturday night, fish cakes Sunday morning, 
oyster soup and chicken or turkey Sunday noon, 
all of course. And there were some immutable 
grievances. Some people love sage and some hate 
it ; but it was a constant and abundant constituent 
of that part of fowls which is so generously 
given out in hotels and boarding houses, the 
stuffing. There is a humane invention of the 
clever chemist known as baking-powder, in which 
the gas-giving compounds are shrewdly mixed to 
baffle culinary recklessness. Before its day, when 
the neat-handed Phyllis or the sturdy Mary Ann 
came in from the afternoon out and rushed to stir 
up "soda biscuit" for supper, she made sure of 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 55 

at least twice the necessary sal aeratus, with 
grievous offense to sight and taste in the product. 
Yeast was strictly domestic in those days. Like 
the fire of the Vestal Virgins the home-made sup- 
ply was never allowed to get out. Or perhaps a 
lump of dough was carried over from one rising 
to the next. Thus besides the proper alcoholic 
ferment much ''wild yeast" was propagated to 
make acetic acid and lactic acid and other acids, 
and the bread was almost always sour. So no 
gift more precious could be borne to anyone con- 
demned to the hotel dietary than a loaf of genuine 
home-made bread. It was an occasion for gloat- 
ing. Many such gifts were made and remembered 
to the present day. 

I am permitted to record some of the ex- 
periences and recollections of N. A. McClary '84, 
who boarded at the Frary table for eight years 
and roomed in the house for two. 

"I have heard Mr. Duncan say that in his 
younger days Mr. Frary was a very interesting 
and attractive man. He had been a shoemaker 
before he became a hotel keeper. He was re- 
markably well-read and knew Shakespeare as few 
men know him. Mr. Frary often had a volume 
of Shakespeare open before him as he worked at 
his bench and could repeat from memory long 
passages. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, when he 
was a professor in the Medical School, knew Mr. 
Frary well and greatly enjoyed his society. Mr. 
Duncan said that he frequently found Dr. Holmes 
sitting in Mr. Frary's shop, the two discussing 



56 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Shakespeare while Mr. Frary pegged away at his 
work. 

''I remember one day when Mr. Frary was at 
the desk, as infrequently happened, a young minc- 
ing sort of man, whom I guessed to be a New 
Yorker, floated into the office with, 'Can I have 
my shoes shined?' Mr. Frary leered at him but 
did not answer. He repeated his question rather 
insistently when Mr. Frary indicating the little 
corner enclosure where the washstand was lo- 
cated said. There's the blacking; shine them 
yourself.' The New Yorker inspected the hard 
worn-out brush and the empty blacking box and 
coming out with the brush in hand ventured the 
inquiry, 'Where can I find some blacking?' Then 
the bolt fell. 'You damned fool! There's black- 
ing enough on that brush now to shine a hundred 
pairs of shoes.' I think that the incident was 
rather characteristic of his attitude towards 
guests." 

(Yes, and of the employes. After any little 
congestion of business there was a tendency to 
speed the parting guests very quickly and then 
give thanks. It might almost be said they were 
ready with the swift kick). 

"My personal relations with Mr. Frary were 
rather friendly. I kept out of his way pretty 
well. But one night Billy Reding's dog followed 
me in and upstairs. Mr. Frary happened to be 
passing through the hall and saw us. He imme- 
diately let loose a torrent of profanity and abuse 
and ended by ordering me out of the house. I 



58 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

was not able to get in a single word. But as soon 
as he had disappeared Mrs. Frary came out of her 
room and asked me not to go and not to mind it. 
She then made the only derogatory remark that 
I ever heard from her concerning him, 'If you 
knew what I have to stand from him you would 
think this nothing.' He had grown very sour and 
irritable towards the latter part of his life. The 
students, sensing this, made life miserable for 
him, often shouting in a chorus as they passed his 
windows, '0, Hod!' and other inane calls. I was 
told that he had the veranda, originally built on 
the Main Street front, removed because the boys 
had the habit of stopping there as they passed and 
dancing clogs for his benefit. 

''I have been told that Mr. Duncan once de- 
fended Mr. Frary in a lawsuit and that the latter 
in the fullness of his gratitude had impetuously 
told him that he would board him for the rest of 
his life. Be that as it may Mr. Duncan held on 
for a long time and Mr. Frary got tired of the 
arrangement, although it was clear that he ad- 
mired his star boarder. During his last illness 
he was delirious a part of the time. One day Mr. 
Duncan went in to see him. Mrs. Frary bent 
over the bed and said, 'Horace, this is Mr. Duncan 
come to see you ; you know your friend, Mr. Dun- 
can.' 'Know him? Damn him; I should say that 
I do know him ! He hasn't paid a cent of board 
for 20 years." 

(It will be noticed that this is another form of 
the legend already cited). 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 59 

''Mrs. Frary was a very superior woman. I 
did not realize it so fully at the time as I have 
since. I have known very few women of so much 
character, so forceful, so intelligent and so good 
at heart. How she dominated the dining-room! 
It was clear even at Commencement time that she 
acknowledged no superiors and very few equals. 
She liked to talk with the men and seemed to have 
little use for the 'weaker sex.' And the men 
liked to talk with her, even the most distinguished 
of them. Mr. Stoughton, the New York lawyer, 
was one of her favorites. He had a home at 
Windsor and sometimes drove to Hanover for 
dinner. She would limp over to his chair, shake 
hands with him and personally take his order. 
Before he left the room she would draw up a 
chair, sit down beside him, and they would have 
the best of times. It would be the same way with 
Dr. Peasley and many others. She liked to talk 
to Mr. Duncan, but for the most part ignored Mrs. 
Haddock, widow of Professor Haddock who was 
once Minister to Portugal, who sat next to him. 

"It was a real treat to hear Mr. Duncan talk. 
Mrs. Haddock was an excellent foil for him. Mr. 
Duncan would tell stories of his brother-in-law, 
Rufus Choate, and Mrs. Haddock liked to tell of 
her experiences at European courts. She had 
been presented at several, either going to or re- 
turning from their mission. In England she had 
danced in a quadrille with Queen Victoria and 
Prince Albert. At Lisbon she had given English 
lessons to the young Prince. She had entertained 



60 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Daniel Webster and many other notables in her 
own home. She had much to say about her 
brother Richard B. Kimball. She loved to tell 
about the courtship of her niece by Levi P. 
Morton, and how when he first came to Hanover 
in charge of a branch men's furnishing goods 
store the faculty people would have nothing to do 
with him socially. 'And see where he is now !' — 
at that time millionaire banker and Minister to 
France." 

(Mrs. Haddock's conversation was often of the 
nature of a monologue and frequently superposed 
irrelevantly upon other talk. If one wished real 
conversation with her it was necessary to sit close 
and hurl winged words into a large ear trumpet.) 

''Mr. Duncan was emphatically the autocrat of 
our table. He would raise his voice slightly, as 
Mrs. Haddock was quite deaf, so I got much of 
the conversation even before by gradual promo- 
tion, seat by seat, I reached an eminent position 
at Mr. Duncan's left hand and opposite Mrs. Had- 
dock. He was the best conversationalist I ever 
listened to. All his long life" (Mr. Duncan died 
in 1883 in his 76th year.) "he had been a careful 
student of books and of men, to the neglect per- 
haps of his profession. His enunciation was slow 
and musical, his language perfect, some might 
think it almost stilted, never a suggestion of 
slang, no 'young words' as Professor Parker used 
to call them, and the matter was always interest- 
ing. I have always felt that those table talks 
with Mr. Duncan, running as they did through 






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62 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

several years, were a very important part of my 
education." 

Asa W. Waters of the class of 1871 permits me 
to offer his evidence that in 1870 Squire Duncan 
was not lacking in professional adroitness. This 
is not inconsistent with the traditions of his later 
years. 

**Mr. Frary raved loudly and continuously, and 
said 'cuss words' over the state liquor prohibitory 
legislation, or threatened legislation, which he be- 
lieved was an encroachment on personal liberty, 
and unconstitutional, and he sought frequent 
legal advice from Squire Duncan. Mr. Frary had 
a small room for an office at the front entrance 
to the dining-room, and when the wide door to the 
latter was open we could hear conversations in 
this little room whose door was always open and 
Mr. Frary never lowered his voice, and I give a 
conversation that I thus overheard, and which has 
for some reason lodged in my memory ever since." 

(Mr. FrsiYy) ''Squire Duncan, this being the 
beginning of a new year (1870) I have made out 
your bill for board for the past year; may I hand 
it to you?" 

(Squire Duncan) "Certainly, Mr. Frary; how 
much is it?" 

"Fifty-two weeks at four dollars per week I 
calculate is $208; am I right?" 

"Perfectly, Mr. Frary. Will you let me take 
the bill, over to my office, for I think I have some 
charges against you, Mr. Frary, for legal advice." 

"All right. Squire Duncan." 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 63 

Our curiosity was satisfied, for we overheard 
the final settlement. ''I find, Mr. Frary, that I 
have charges against you on my books, totaling 
$260.25." 

''Why, Squire Duncan, I did not think I owed 
you so much as that. What is the twenty-five 
cents for?" 

*'Do you not remember that I acknowledged a 
deed for you ? I cannot help, Mr. Frary, but think 
from your manner that you feel that I have 
charged more than you expected, but there was 
much legal effort and research necessary to give 
sound legal opinions upon the constitutional ques- 
tions you submitted to me; but I do not wish you 
to think you are overcharged, and if you will re- 
ceipt in full payment your bill against me, I will 
do the same with mine against you." 

''All right, Squire Duncan." 



IV 

THE OLD CHAPEL 

When morning prayers took flight from the Old 
Chapel in Old Dartmouth Hall to the new and 
traditionless Rollins Chapel the College passed the 
dividing line between two phases. One of the 
many New Dartmouths began to displace an 
antiquated and, in many respects, pernicious old 
one. 

The simple college of fifty years ago remains 
in the memory of many of us in vivid contrast 
with the huge complex organism of today. The 
units themselves — educational, administrative, 
financial, athletic, artistic, social — are subdivided 
and of slow and unequal development. Compari- 
son is valid; criticism is not fairly based on the 
standards of today. 

My reference is to effects on the material of 
operation and production — the undergraduates 
— without which the college would be futile ; and 
especially to influences upon their disposition, 
manners, and customs, because these make the 
daily life of the college and largely determine the 
later graduate relations of the same men. 

In the evolutionary process colleges in similar 
conditions have reached about the same stages, 
but if we looked the country over we should find 
much diversity in conditions and maturity of de- 
velopment. 

(64) 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 65 

I suppose that every college has its period, long 
or short, of mischief for mischief's sake. The 




The Corpus Delicti 

monkey stage is never completely outgrown, but 
the mischief incidental to some scheme or excit- 
ing occasion is quite different from that done 
without the occasion. Lawless collection of ma- 
5 



66 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

terials for a celebrating bonfire and heaping of 
all the gates in the middle of the Green, over- 
throwing someone's fence in a rush and painting 
a dignified statue red, resisting stupid or brutal 
police force and horning a professor, house-break- 
ing for the sake of a trophy and changing the 
sign boards on the highway differ very much in 
the impulse that causes the one or the other. We 
shall always have the misdeeds of excitement ; de- 
liberate invention and perpetration of mischief 
have nearly died out from the more advanced 
colleges. 

(The only serious instance we have Avith us at 
present is ringing in a false fire alarm, a misde- 
meanor so inconsiderate in trifling with a com- 
munity's protection against great disaster that it 
can be done only by those without training for 
social life and of limited intelligence.) 

In this respect a few years have made great 
changes. And the chief causes of the changes 
are obvious — the spirit of the times : no longer is 
the perpetration of a malicious trick the object 
of admiration within or without the college walls ; 
the development of organized athletics : the husky 
lad aching for adventure is no longer compelled 
to steal the bell tongues or to steer a cow into a 
recitation room in order to demonstrate his 
prowess, in fact he is considered foolish and dis- 
loyal if he wastes his power in such a manner; 
different relations with the faculty: though no 
more kindly at heart, they have come down to a 
more companionable and comprehensible level; 



68 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

far better discipline, because less, and admin- 
istered by experts, kindly, justly, reluctantly; and 
too many other interesting things in the busy life 
of the college. 

As an important local factor, the Old Chapel, 
with its accumulated barbarities, disappeared 
from the daily life of the College in the autumn 
of 1885, though its influence lingered until as late 
as 1897, when senior rhetoricals were given up. 

The room was shaped like a well-proportioned 
packing case. The interior might be described as 
wholly nave-ish. It was entered by two doors on 
the west. The entering multitude passed on the 
right and on the left of a raised platform sup- 
porting a pulpit and seats for the faculty, and 
when the hustle was over found itself seated 
seniors and juniors in front, backed respectively 
by sophomores and freshmen. Opposite the plat- 
form, therefore at the east end of the room, was 
a low gallery for organ and choir. Galleries also 
ran along the sides, so high that their occupants, 
the Chandlers and Aggies could, if they wished, 
play cards or match pennies without observation. 
The seats were long benches neatly grained and 
incised by the jack-knives of many generations. 
There was no more beauty or grace in the room 
than in the bleachers now on the oval. It was 
cold in winter, and at times so filled with smoke 
that the chorus of exaggerated coughs often ob- 
literated the gospel. The atmosphere, fragrant 
with the prayers of good men, was also saturated 
with the microbes of deviltry. At this time and 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 69 

for many years after, the permanent members 
of the faculty took turns in officiating when for 
any reason the president was not there. This 
custom was well appreciated by the objects of 
prayer, and the attention to a novice's maiden ef- 
fort was almost paralyzing. 

As the chapel and the church were the only as- 
sembly rooms in the village (though on a grand 
enough occasion seats were placed in the gym- 
nasium) the proper, or at least the lawful, doings 
here would have fitted out a good variety show: 
brilliant lectures, as of Dr. John Lord — how well 
I recall the high nasal, '*0 ! transcendental Car- 
lyle!" and the clog dance which he apparently 
carried on back of the pulpit as his periods grew 
more and more dynamic — and senior rhetoricals ; 
singing school and Daniel Pratt; college mass- 
meetings and projections with the calcium light. 

The Chapel music was in charge of an organist 
and a chorister from the nearly defunct Handel 
Society. (Possibly some who read this may be 
induced to turn to Professor J. K. Lord's History 
and read there of this ancient and most honorable 
organization. It is a genuine loss to the College 
that one of the most notable and successful 
musical organizations in New England should 
have been allowed to lapse and should have been 
replaced later by the glee club only, with its jolly 
but trivial music. In the present awakening of 
the colleges to higher musical ambitions it might 
be possible to restore the name and purpose of 
the Handel Society, though it would hardly be 




The Region of Harmonious Strains 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 71 

possible to recover its early prestige.) At this 
time the society elected three or four members 
from each class, held occasional meetings, and 
was listed in the Aegis, but its only publicity 
was in the chapel service maintained by the 
meagerly salaried chorister and organist. This 
relation to colleg'e affairs continued for many 
years with less and less discrimination in elec- 
tions. The last stage was the election of a group 
of good fellows who could stand a 25-cents initia- 
tion fee, and a choral march to *'Lige" Carter's 
where the 25 cents each was expended in peanuts 
and accessories. Along in the eighties the faculty 
appointed Professor Charles F. Richardson and 
the writer a committee to strive for its reanima- 
tion. But there was no life in it. Ancient repu- 
tation could make no stand against modern condi- 
tions. The difficulty about discarding good old 
things is to know which are finished forever and 
which will be required again. 

My memory is a little hazy, but I think that in 
our freshman fall ('68) the organ was a malodeon 
with the heaves, and a ''used" organ was installed 
during the year. This organ was a mark for all 
the kinds of pranks that could be performed with 
or upon an organ, the most effective being to 
wedge open a high squealy pipe so that, when the 
air was turned in, a continuous and pervasive 
wail came forth until the air was gone. It was 
indeed ''an ungodly kist of whistles." Organists 
of cunning learned to give the organ a cautious 
trial in advance, and many mornings the choir 



72 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

sang without any organ because it had been mis- 
guided into freakish ways. The chorister had his 
trials too ; he was paid to have a choir there, but 
no choir was paid to be there. At least one faith- 
ful chorister, deserted by his choir, carried 
through the whole hymn alone, much to his credit 
and to the joy of the audience. It was always a 
demonstrative audience and surprisingly sensitive 
to any little misadventure in the music. 

We, the commoners, as contrasted with the 
dwindling aristocracy of the Handel Society, had 
no hymn books in those days, and our only help- 
ful contribution to the service was a sort of hum- 
ming obligato when the tune was familiar. It 
may be that earlier the Compleat Psalmist 
brought up from the Indian school at Lebanon, 
Connecticut, or Watts and Select was in the 
students' hands. History does not tell. It might 
have occurred to some one that the animals' at- 
tention could have been engaged a least tempo- 
rarily by letting them roar. The little Aegis is 
moved to put forth an editorial on the subject, in 
the spring of 1871, which concludes, ''We ask not 
now a modern chapel; we ask not voluntary at- 
tendance; we ask not to have it warmed in 
winter; we ask not even easy seats; we do ask 
hymn-books. Give, give us hymn-books." 

Among the pleasant customs of the place was 
that of noticing, ''featuring," celebrities, that is 
to say college notorieties. The students faced the 
doors of entrance and as men came in who by 
reason of some action (not meritorious) were in 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 73 

the public eye, although they might be unaware 
of it, they were greeted by well-graduated ''wood- 
ing up," sometimes gentle and significant, some- 
times tempestuous and dust-raising, always un- 
desired. One morning during the suspense period 
of a faculty investigation involving a considerable 
number of men, the hymn accidentally selected for 
the day had for a refrain ''Lord, here am I, send 
me; send me," which was received with joyful ap- 
preciation. 

Here Daniel Pratt, the Great American 
Traveler, delivered those famous lectures of 
which I remember only the titles, "The Inventive, 
Invisible Propelling Power of all Valuables," and 
"The Vocabulary Laboratory." Daniel was that 
for which the people have invented so many 
synonymous terms, — he was cracked, nutty, 
bughouse; he had a partial vacuum under his hat; 
or in really elegant language, he was troubled 
with flitter-mice in the campanile. I do not know 
whether any one ever had the curiosity to trace 
him to a relation with the rest of the world. He 
appeared; he lectured; he gathered the cash; he 
made off. And that is all we knew of him. He 
was a primitive form of the modern smoke- 
talker. Under guard and escort of a self-chosen 
committee he was brought to the chapel stage 
where he was received with thunderous applause. 
After a serio-grotesque introduction he started 
on his "lecture" which was a swirl of incoherent 
verbiage. It soon wearied an audience little 
inured at that time to lectures, and the senior 



74 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

president would interrupt with the suggestion 
that it would be wise to take up the collection be- 
fore the audience began to fade away. After the 




The Great American Traveler 

collection Daniel was nominated President of the 
United States with applause comparable only to 
that of a national convention. Then it was 
whispered that the faculty were on the way and 
that he would better beat it. Beat it he did, some- 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 75 

times with the speed of a jack rabbit, followed by 
a hooting, howling mob. The last time that I 
knew of his presence he made the statement be- 
fore he left that ''the bottom of hell had fallen 
out and hell had lit in Hanover," which certainly 
was not incoherent. But the boys were not so 
bad. He got a pretty good purse; and on one of 
the more agitating occasions, when Daniel 
dropped the collection which had been bagged in 
a handkerchief, the mob fell to and gathered and 
returned it all. 

By ancient custom, still continued, the senior 
class closed their work in the College with the 
**Sing Out" — "Come let us anew Our journey 
pursue," to the tune of Amesbury. It was as 
difficult to carry through without some slip then 
as it is now; but the occasion was a solemn one, 
rotwithstanding; it meant so much to men who 
were emerging from the sheltered and directed 
life to the struggle in an unknown world. 
Knowledge of the time when this custom orig- 
inated seems now to be lost. My father, who 
entered college in 1832, said that it was consid- 
ered an old custom in his day. 

On Wednesday afternoon, seniors — one to 
four, as many as could be dragged to the sacrifice 
— spoke original pieces to the assembled college. 
It was an exercise in favor with no one, and the 
assembled multitude was like a pack of wolves, 
watching for any weakness in order to pounce 
and devour. Woe to the senior who had made 
himself disliked ! Woe to the platitudinous bore ! 



76 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Woe to the halting f orgetter of lines ! As a typi- 
cal ordeal for public speakers it was most com- 
mendable, and if generally applied would have 
saved the world eons of dreary deliverances. The 
man who had something to say and said it quickly 
and audibly could have a hearing, and who else 
deserves one? In fact, any one who could hold 
that crowd for twelve minutes could preach a 
sermon in a boiler factory to an intoxicated gang 
of cannibals who knew no English. Although it 
lacked decorum as a college exercise, it dragged 
on long after the chapel was abandoned for re- 
ligious uses, but was finally discontinued as too 
demoralizing to the College and too exhausting to 
the presiding officer. 

The chapel was a convenient exchange for the 
products of the ''Darkmouth" Press — class re- 
criminations, grinds, protests against some ut- 
terance of the Dartmouth, or the Aegis, or some 
faculty action — and casual leaflets were often to 
be found scattered over the seats. It was, of 
course, the duty of the janitor to intercept or to 
collect all such literature, but he was only one and 
not a college graduate at that, and the name of 
his adversaries was Legion. After I had been 
on the faculty a year or two a variation of this 
custom aroused my interest and my curiosity, 
which had to wait some thirty years for satisfac- 
tion. When the College was all assembled, the 
bell had ceased ringing, and the President had 
risen to conduct the service, suddenly a hugh sheet 
of paper loosened itself from the wall back of the 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 77 

faculty, gently opened and unrolled displaying a 
bitter attack upon one of the classes present by 
another. For a period great noise prevailed, but 
after it ceased the service went on. It was espe- 
cially trying for the President, as he was com- 
pelled to go through the service without any 
knowledge of the attraction behind him. The in- 
genious inventor told me all about it many years 
after he had secured an irrevocable diploma. 

From time to time other objects were dis- 
covered in the chapel which were not in harmony 
with devotional serenity, — a skeleton from the 
Medical School, a real donkey, an anticipatory 
cradle. 

Among the methods employed by consecutive 
classes to show distaste for one another was that 
known as "greasing the seats," — smearing the 
benches with some viscid non-volatile substance 
which disqualified them for their proper use ; mo- 
lasses or soft soap would answer the purpose very 
well though rather too easily removable with 
water. I do not know that any one was ever be- 
guiled into sitting down in the mess, and it is 
difficult to understand now why this form of af- 
front was taken so seriously, since it gave the 
victims freedom from chapel until the seats were 
purified. The typical case, of course, was treat- 
ment of the freshman seats, but one morning the 
Juniors — my own class — were thus evicted 
from their devotions. Outrage unspeakable! An 
idiot with initiative always has followers. He — 
that unknown idiot — yelled, "Over into the 



78 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Sophomore seats," and the whole class trailed 
after him like so many particularly foolish sheep. 
What could be more absurd? Why should Juniors 




The Wily Faculty Man 



ever wish to revert to the haunts of Sophomores ; 
and especially when they could go out and sit on 
the grass and lose one chapel? This business 
called for blood, and men were already coming to 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 79 

grips for a row which would have been memorable 
in the history of the College when suddenly a 
presence appeared among them. It happened that 
chapel that morning was in charge of a lovable 
gentleman with a keen eye and unquestioned re- 
serve force. ''Stop/' he thundered; and they 
stopped. *'Go out," he ordered the invaders; and 
they went — past the ranks of seniors who stood 
on their seats and jeered. I do not know whether 
any other member of the faculty could have 
brought off this harmless conclusion, but 
''Charley" Young, later known to Princeton 
students as "Twinkle" did, and of course we liked 
him all the better. 

On occasions frequent enough to establish a 
custom the Seniors and Juniors, entitled to prec- 
edence, remained in their seats at the close of the 
brief services, while the lower classes rushed past 
them. The whisper had gone around that a cane 
in Freshman hands challenged the Sophomores to 
die for the right just outside the front doors. But 
it had been tried before and usually the Voice of 
Authority walked off with the cane. Only the in- 
judicious really grieved; for there were great in- 
conveniences in unprepared clothes and unsecured 
text books. 

One more custom which I will mention was 
firmly fastened on the Old Chapel, the college 
mass-meetings. I have always supposed that they 
were unauthorized. In any case when business 
was to be transacted in convention of the whole 
college, the president of the senior class called a 



80 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

mass-meeting commonly by notices passed around 
during the services, and, as much as possible, men 
were prevented from going out at their con- 
clusion. All classes had recitations immediately 
after chapel, and the meetings used up a large 
part and frequently the whole of the recitation 
hour. I can imagine the annoyance to the mem- 
bers of the faculty as they sat waiting for their 
classes to appear. From the student standpoint 
this was regarded as an ancient right. It lasted 
many years after this time, but before the chapel 
was abandoned I think permission to hold such 
a meeting was required, and granted only for 
substantial reasons. 

It would be an exaggeration to claim that the 
matters here mentioned were of daily occurrence, 
but I think it is a moderate statement that at this 
period no student could go through college with- 
out an experience of them all. And they meant 
much more in the life of the college than the bare 
incident. 

When in the fall of 1885 the regular chapel 
services were transferred to the new chapel, the 
well-planned gift of Edward Ashton Rollins of 
the class of 1851, a huge load of hindering cus- 
toms and precedents was taken out of the way 
automatically, without discussion or question, and 
the forward movement of the College quickened 
and lightened. 



W ^' 



o 

0. 




^•^-tfx^r 




V 

THE BURYING GROUND 

**I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the 
church yard, the cloisters and the church, amus- 
ing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions 
that I met with in these several regions of the 
dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the 
buried person but that he was born upon one day 
and died upon another; the whole history of his 
life being comprehended in these two circum- 
stances that are common to all mankind." 

Should any one, surprised, inquire by what 
chance one whose life has been submerged in 
dangerous ''practical" studies knows of Joseph 
Addison's meditations upon Westminster Abbey, 
the answer is ready — a lonesome country college 
a half century ago, the absence of those seductive 
electives in Economics, or Biology, or Music, or 
Art which lure students from their well-earned 
sports, a ponderous personality who roared good 
literature at us with the inward gentleness of the 
sucking dove, and a noble liberality of the United 
Fraternity and the Social Friends in the circula- 
tion of their books. 

It is to be held in memory that the settlement of 
the town began five years earlier than the estab- 
lishment of the College, and homesteads were 
taken in a broken line around from the north- 
west corner to the Center, that the oldest place of 

(82) 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 83 

burial was at the Center; and that the early 
population was surprisingly large. In ''Hanover 
Forty Years Ago," Dorrance Currier tells us, 
doubtless from the records, that the population of 
the town of Hanover in 1800 was 28 more than 
in 1900. In 1771 Eleazar Wheelock set aside an 
acre, and this grant was later confirmed by the 
Trustees as ''a burying ground for the use of this 
College and the inhabitants of this vicinity." 

Our predecessors in the town and college left 
a record here as nowhere else. It is fragmentary, 
and must be read with sympathy, imagination, 
and the historic sense. There is no mental task 
more unnatural and difficult than to read the past 
in the light of its own standards and customs. In 
our pride in all the machinery and in the mind's 
broad scope of the present we fail to realize that 
the intelligence which we scatter over many af- 
fairs they were compelled to concentrate on a few. 
We forget that the intervening past and future 
— our past and their future — had not then ar- 
rived, that they had precedents which we do not 
recognize; and we fail to see that they were as 
modern and progressive in their day as are the 
best of us now. We may smile at their ways of 
life and their modes of expression because they 
are unfamiliar, but for the same times and con- 
ditions we can claim no assured superiority. Even 
our sense of humor, so different from theirs, ends 
in complete irreverence. 

The settlers of the valley of the Connecticut 
were a staunch and sturdv band. Following 



84 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

closely as they did on the receding Indians they 
met recurrent waves of savagery with indomit- 
able courage. Their quality as pioneers in a new 
territory was never surpassed unless by the May- 
flower's company. They were seeking homes, not 
gold nor adventure ; and — sure sign of worth — 
they brought along their wives and children. In 
Hanover in 1767, in a population of 92 there were 
26 heads of families and 11 unmarried men. As 
a matter of course they brought along the church 
and the town-meeting. For Hanover the town 
government was set up before they took posses- 
sion. They were progressives looking for larger 
liberty in the minor details of life than they had 
at home. Wheelock's safe conduct to Dr. Crane 
for Sunday travel, when he sent him in a hurry 
to Connecticut to delay Mrs. Wheelock and the 
Indian School, is evidence, and, in a more piquant 
way, the exclamations of the early Canaan settler, 
"I don't want to stay any longer in a place where 
I'm not allowed to kiss my wife on Sunday," and 
— worse yet — ''We'll build a home up there 
where 'taint unlawful for a man to say 'damn it' 
if he is strongly tempted." 

If they were at times contumacious and 
obstinate it was with legal and not physical 
methods. They had no telephones nor daily 
papers nor moving pictures to occupy their at- 
tention. It is possible to argue that they were of 
splendidly rugged bodies or they could not have 
endured the conditions of life as long as they did, 
or that they died untimely deaths from hardships 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 85 

and lack of care. The headstones tell too many 
tales of death by consumption, and of ''infant 
sons," young wives, and men under fifty. 

Wheelock's acre now augmented on the north, 
is entered through Sanborn Lane between Robin- 
son and Tuck Halls; and in all New England 
there can be no similar parcel of ground divided 




The Old Valley from the Northeast 

by a narrower boundary from perpetual youth 
and boundless vitality. From every human hope 
and eager forelook a step carries to the calm and 
completeness of the past. Without is work to be 
done, responsibility without limit to be taken on, 
the highest service to be performed ; within is the 
story or the hint of work well done, burdens 
borne, service finished. Only once can one ex- 
perience in full the new comer's pleasant shock of 
surprise as he comes from the paraphernalia of 



86 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

life, ugly but some think convenient — dusty 
streets, black sidewalks, poles where trees should 
be, ill-smelling engines, and the rest — to a spot 
made so beautiful by nature, the two promon- 
tories, the three ravines carved out by the water 
rushing to the sea, the ancient pines, the wild 
flowers in their season, and the whole carefully 
tended, but not marred, by perpetual care. 

It is a place of historic inspiration and of af- 
fectionate memories. Of the eight deceased presi- 
dents of the College six are buried here. Dana 
and Tyler removed after their terms of office, and 
their graves are elsewhere. The bodies of about 
forty members of the faculty were placed here 
and those of many friendly villagers. After four 
years the students scatter to the ends of the earth, 
and if all of the living thousands did not love all 
their teachers equally, it must be that many af- 
fectionate thoughts go back to Sanborn and Noyes 
and Proctor and Patterson and Young and Frost 
and William Smith and Richardson and Wells and 
Updyke, and indeed to all the rest, from men who 
remember them yet. Families have grown up 
here in happy homes, and from the need of larger 
opportunities have gone over the land and across 
the seas, but they never forget, and in due season 
return to bear to this beautiful place of rest those 
who made the homes. How far reaching this re- 
lation is may be imagined, since of the fourteen 
members of the academic faculty of my time I, the 
writer, know descendants, in the first or second 
generation, of ten, and I am not aware that the 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 87 

others left issue; and a similar statement could 
be made for the scientific and medical faculties. 

The roll of burials numbers about 1200 for the 
150 years ; but this is certainly less than the actual 
number. The record was made up in 1912 from 
the tombstones; some inscriptions were obliter- 
ated; there were nameless graves; and a few 
names since have failed to be added to the list. 

The center of greatest interest is a rod or two 
west of the eastern boundary of the older acre, 
for here the forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The 
honor of coming first belongs to the Rev. John 
Maltby, who died September 30, 1771. He was 
the son of Mrs. Sarah Maltby who became 
Wheelock's second wife, and was held by 
Wheelock in fatherly affection. Had he lived he 
might have been the second president of the Col- 
lege. The inscription follows: 

Here refts y'^ Body of y^ Rev'd 
Mr. John Maltby born at 
New Haven in Connectic 
Auguft: y^ 3^ A D 1727, 
Graduated at Yale 
College AD 1747 
Minifter to a Presbyterean 
Church at Bermuda & 
Then at wilton in South Car- 
olina. A strenuous afsertor of y^ 
Doctrines of Grace Convinced 
of Original Guilt & Confid- 
ing in y^ Sole Righteousnefs of 
Christ. Juftife, Loft Man, 



88 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

before God, In Preaching, 
Zealous & Pathetic, in his 
Devotions fervent, his Serm- 
ons Judicious Correct & Inftr- 
uctive: his ftile Manly & 
Solemn, of Manners gentle 
Polite & humone of strong 
Mentel Endowments, embe 
llifh'd with Sacred & Polite 
Literoture. In his Friendship 
Cordial sincere & truly 
Detefting Craft Difsimulatino 
& Fraud, he died Sept'" 30"^ 
(A.D. 1771) AEtat 45^° 

From the apparent accuracy of detail we may 
guess that it was drafted by Pres. Wheelock, but 
the archaic form and blundering workmanship 
may be ascribed to a local artist whose improving 
hand is recognizable in others of the early head- 
stones. This, a horizontal slab, is dark and rusty, 
poorly weathered; a little of the inscription has 
broken away, and more will yield to a slight pres- 
sure. The early stones are plain slabs, quarried 
in east Lebanon for the first thirty years or so, 
of a poor quality of iron-bearing slate or schist, 
stratified, and easily breaking up along the plains 
of cleavage. They are commonly finished only on 
one side and with a trefoil outline at the upper 
edge. Similar stones are found in neighboring 
burying grounds of about the same period. Many 
of the inscriptions upon these stones in the grave- 
yard at Hanover Center are wholly lost. Fol- 



90 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

lowing the slate period, stones of a quality of 
soapstone, quarried in Vermont, were used for a 
time. Marble of a coarse variety, likewise from 
Vermont, comes into common use after 1800, 
and the inscriptions in some cases are very well- 
made and clear. Beyond the distinguished tombs 
of President Wheelock and his companions the 
simple slabs for headstones were held to be 
enough in the early days. Monuments are of 
much later date. Nearly all the later stones are 
of granite of many varieties and sources, some 
of them very beautiful in their polish. As one 
views the ponderous parallelopipedon resting over 
the remains of Asa Crosby one does not wonder 
at the frank belief of Jason Dudley that he would 
be a little late to the resurrection. And others 
whose escatology involves the literal uprising of 
the material body have reason for a like anxiety. 
Next to Maltby's tomb are those of Eleazar 
Wheelock and his wife, and nearby those of John 
Wheelock and Bezaleel Woodward. All are of a 
similar general style to Maltby's with horizontal 
slabs, but of later date, and much better finish. 
Wheelock's is often quoted, but may not for that 
reason be omitted — in Latin and English 

Here rests the body 

of 

Eleazar Wheelock, S. T. D. 

Founder, and first president 

of 

Dartmouth College, 

and 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 91 

Moor's Charity School 
By the gospel he subdued the ferocity of the 
savages and to the civilized he opened new paths 

of science. 

Traveler, 

Go, if you can, and deserve 

The sublime reward of such merit. 

He was born in the year 1710, and died 

in 1779. 



Pietate filii Johannis Wheelock, 
Hoc monumentum constitutum, inscrip- 
tumque fuit. 

Anno MDCCCX 

And no living person would belittle the virtues 
of Mary Wheelock, wife of Bezaleel Woodward 
after reading, 

Her remembrance will last when 
this marble is defaced and the 
latest reader of this inscription is 
numbered with the dead 

The study of mortuary inscriptions and gifts 
to the dead has always interested the living. 
From these stones it is plain that at the end of 
the 18th century it was held to be essential to have 
reading matter upon the gravestones besides the 
mere vital statistics, a custom which has con- 
tinued with gradual decrease as monuments and 
headstones have taken the place of the simple 
slab. The elaborate detail of the Egyptian tombs 
is necessarily absent, and the terse, often sym- 



92 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

bolic, label of the shelf in the catacombs "In 
pace", ''locus Petri", ''dormit", or the palm 
branch, was not enough. The legends on these 
stones are pious if the deceased is the speaker, 
laudatory if the testimony of another, and very 
rarely expressions of grief. The headstone at the 
grave of young Mrs. Tilden is an example of 
several of the characteristics of these early Han- 
over inscriptions, 

In memory of Mr.*^ Achfah wife of Mr 

Joseph Tilden who died Dec 30^^ 

1776 in her 28"^ Year 

Remember Frinds as you 

Pafs by as you be now fo 

once was I as I be now so 

muft you be. Prepare For 

death & Follow me 
''Student's Row" discloses an amiable fraternal 
custom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, 
the setting of memorial stones by organizations of 
the College. Three were placed by the United 
Fraternity, three by the Social Friends, and two 
by the Theological Society. The earliest dated 
stone is to John Merrill, a freshman who died in 
1797, and the list closed, perhaps for lack of ma- 
terial, with memorials to two freshmen in 1831 
erected, one by the Theological Society and one 
by the Social Friends. It is quite a tax upon the 
imagination to reproduce a freshman worthy of 
a monument by any Theological Society. 

This one has no date but is probably prior to 
1800. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 93 

Here lie y^ remains of Mr. Levi 
Washbourn of New Braintree Late a 
Member of y^ School in 
this Place who died by a short 
and Violent Disease aged 18 
Years & 5 months. Here Youth 
and beauty lose their grace 
In this reclase and gloomy 
Place Till y*' angelic trum- 
pet sound to wake this 
saint from under Ground 

Our young brothers of a century ago were not 
indifferent to the claims of fashion, and the 
fraternal slabs much resemble one another. The 
prevailing mode seems to have been, first a motto 
or text in Latin, then the statement of facts, or 
theme, followed by four to six original verses, 
which might be styled improvement of the theme. 

This to Junior Spaulding is a perfect type : 

Omnium aetatum certum est terminus. 

Consecrated 

by the 

United Fraternity 

to the memory of 

Oliver Spaulding 

drowned 

in the Connecticut River 

A. D. 1807, July 29^^ 

With social affection and virtuous mind 
Exalted by genius, by science refined. 



94 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Our Spaulding in rare combination did blend 
The man, the philosopher, poet and friend. 

And these are the verses inscribed upon the 
gravestone of Senior Simonds whose death took 
place in 1801 : 




„k. *s.-^ ?- 



The Forefathers of the Hamlet Sleep 

Science, Religion in our Simonds shone 
And all the manly virtues were his own 
With anguished hearts we mourn his early doom 
And pay affection's tribute at his tomb. 

Unfortunately the verses in other cases are 
nearly or quite illegible, but it is obvious that il- 
literacy in these inscriptions was not at this 
period inevitable, though it might have been held 
excusable. 

Artemas Cook, a sophomore, died August, 1800, 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 95 

and his gravestone renewed in 1859 by a surviv- 
ing college mate bears the following legend: 
Sons of Dartmouth ! Your brother had 
quickness of apprehansion 
and aptness to teach, 
with the wages of teaching 
he bought instruction 
Of the many noble women buried here the 
names of four have become peculiarly wrought 
into the history of Hanover — Mary Maynard 
Hitchcock in whose memory the Hospital was 
established, Emily Howe Hitchcock who founded 
and endowed the Howe Library, Theodosia Stock- 
bridge, whose name is given to the Stockbridge 
Association for Boys, and of whom one of her 
former boys declared, "No woman in our village 
ever exerted a like influence for good," and 
Christie Warden, an estimable young woman, 
whose name is associated with one of the most 
dramatic tragedies in New England. 

The curiosity aroused by reading from a simple 
slab: 

Here lies the mortal wreck of 

Sally Duget 

In the midst of society 

she lived alone 

beneath the mockery of cheerfulness 

she had deep woes 

in the ruins of her intellect 

the kindness of her hart survived 

She perished in the snow 

in the night of Feb. 26, 1854 



96 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

is satisfied in a letter to The Dartmouth Adver- 
tiser and Literary Gazette, dated March 1, 1854, 
and published in the April number. The letter is 
signed, J. R., without doubt the Rev. John Rich- 
ards, then minister of the College Church. Sally 
Duget's mother, born Hannah Rogers, was pro- 
cured from Connecticut by Eleazar Wheelock to 
superintend Commons Hall. Sally, bright and 




A View in the Modem Section 

well educated for the time, at the age of twenty- 
five met with a misfortune which unsettled her 
reason. For the last thirty years she lived the 
life of a hermit in a hut on Corey Hill. The 
epitaph placed on the stone was suggested by J. 
R. in his letter. 

Of course here, as in all similar places since 
men put away their dead, the imagination finds 
ample scope for human interest. It is believed 
that evidence is here of hard conditions and lack 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 97 

of sanitary knowledge. I do not know that we 
can tell from these records alone. Twenty per 
cent of the inscriptions — about 240 — are for 
children under 12; but the records of the last 
decade of the Town of Hanover show the same 
proportion. More careful scrutiny shows that in 
the careful later records almost exactly half are 
of nonviable, still-born, children, of which there 
is little evidence on the stones. Nearly twice as 
many children who drew breath are buried here, 
proportionately. From 1798 to 1813 inclusive are 
8 recorded burials, not more than one in any year ; 
in 1814 there are 4 and in 1815-16, and in the 
next two years one each. These and similar 
groupings suggest, but do not prove, some childish 
epidemic. There is one family group of 17, and 
of the 17, 14 were 24 or younger. Stones mark 
the graves of three children of Rev. John Smith, 
Professor of Languages, a daughter of 23, two 
sons of 28 and 18, all victims of consumption. 
We cannot charge these good people with neglect, 
but they may have had too much faith in ''the 
mysterious dispensations of Providence.'' 

There are evidences too of tough and enduring 
fiber. Eight members of the Flint family are 
grouped together whose average age was 60 
years ; and the seven occupants of the Bridgman 
lot reached a total of about 500 years. 

The section of the cemetery entered by the lane 
which passes the Chandler Building, the Hubbard 
House, and an unsightly ravine-head west of 

7 



98 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

North Massachusetts is in its use about a century 
later than Wheelock's acre. To the antiquary it 
is much less interesting, but it is the resting place 
for the bodies of many who are still held in loving 
memory by the living. It was at one time con- 
nected with the older section by a footbridge 
which spanned the deep ravine and terminated 
near the little fountain. The bridge became un- 
safe and was removed, and funds for its restora- 
tion, unfortunately, have never been available. 
At the time of writing, exact records of the an- 
nexation of the later addition and of the building 
and demolition of the bridge have not been found. 
The addition was brought into use about 1876, 
and the bridge was built in 1882, according to the 
best information attainable. 



VI 

COLLEGE DISCIPLINE 

Writing upon college discipline by one who 
knows is doubtless an indiscretion. I have often 
longed to be indiscreet, but now that the op- 
portunity is present I am like the comic man who 
did not dare to be as funny as he could. Two 
fruitful topics are barred anyway — matters 
which in the long stretch of years I have forgot- 
ten, intentionally or otherwise, and matters which 
would uncomfortably indentify active partici- 
pants. Generalities are far less piquant than 
concrete stories of the misdeeds of John Doe and 
the rest. But John who cribbed in examination 
is now an honored and honorable member of so- 
ciety, and Richard Roe, his partner, who screwed 
up the door of the recitation room with the pro- 
fessor inside, has modified his idea of a joke and 
is now a joy to all who know him, while James 
Hoe, who really disgraced himself and was al- 
lowed softly and silently to vanish away, is a 
deacon in the church and a large contributor to 
the Alumni Fund. No, it would not do. 

The stories of turbulence, insubordination, and 
personal annoyance by students in the first half 
of the 19th century seem incredible to the college 
officer of today. (And the same may be said of 
some of the regulations of the Trustees and 
Faculty.) But one may read of them in Professor 

(99) 



100 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Lord's citations from the college records and 
other sources. And these citations are matched 
from the experience of other institutions during 
the same and even a later period. Strachey, writ- 
ing of Eton at the time when Arnold became 
Head Master of Rugby, 1828, says its government 
was a '^system of anarchy tempered by despot- 
ism." ''But there were times when even that in- 
domitable will (Keate's) was overwhelmed by the 
flood of lawlessness. Every Sunday afternoon he 
attempted to read sermons to the whole school 
assembled ; and every Sunday afternoon the whole 
school assembled shouted him down." 

Whatever the customs elsewhere, here, remov- 
ing an offending stove from a recitation room and 
throwing it into the river ; firing a gun so heavily 
loaded as to break 320 panes of glass, in retalia- 
tion for offensive discipline; turning the occu- 
pants out of a dilapidated building and razing it 
to the ground ; tarring and feathering a bad man ; 
blowing a horn in recitation; wrecking a book- 
store go beyond the commonplace in college 
pranks, especially when superposed upon all the 
familiar disorders. 

Some of this was matched by gum-shoe de- 
tective expeditions of the faculty even in disguise, 
and by police methods doubtless as vexatious to 
the professors as provocative to the students. 

From 1868 (when I first had personal knowl- 
edge) there was a diminuendo in all these prac- 
tices, not without occasional crescendo bursts. 
And the diminuendo has continued. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 101 

If you ask me why the change, I reply at once, 
''Because students of the present time do not care 
to bother with these forms of entertainment." 
No amount of policing could hold 2000 students 
in check during all the hours of the twenty-four. 
The searcher for ultimate truth returns with an- 
other ''Why?" "Why do they not care?" Here 
various philosophers will differ. My own answer 
is that the greatest factor in bringing about this 
most welcome change in college manners is the 
development of athletic sports within and without 
the walls. It has been a steady influence for self- 
government upon the students, and an influence 
upon the faculty for sympathy with the students' 
interests outside of the curriculum. And these 
influences have reacted upon both groups. No 
student can horn or otherwise abuse a professor 
after finding him to be a good sport in a hard- 
fought game of tennis, or a good cook in one of 
the cabins of the Outing Club. No instructor 
after acting as referee in field sports, or after 
talking over affairs of college interest with a 
group of undergraduates on the way home from 
a football game can pussy-foot around to see 
whether his agreeable young acquaintances are 
playing cards when they ought to be studying. 

There are, of course, other causes contributing 
to these more tranquil days and nights, to be 
emphasized according to the personal equation of 
the emphasizer. Such are, the trend of the times 
and public opinion, more refined surroundings, 
the critical attention of the newspapers, a feeling 



102 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

of nearness and neighborliness instead of isola- 
tion, a wider area of patronage introducing di- 
verse habits of thought, the complex organization 
of the modern college, the elective system, and the 
belief that the teacher really has something to 
give. Upon these as a basis floats, as it were, the 
beautiful flower of self-government. The election 
of studies has brought relief to many a teacher 
compelled to carry along men who had no taste 
for his work, but who really were interested in 
something else which they were unable to get. 
More frequently than is generally known, some 
Ph. D. freshly decorated from the graduate school, 
with vast learning, and with vast contempt for 
the teachers who have not had his advantages and 
for the "boneheads" to whom he has to devote 
his time, or some professor called from another 
institution, with individuality and superficial 
mannerisms, will arouse the hostility of the 
quickly and crudely judging undergraduate as 
suddenly as one dog hates a stranger dog upon 
the street. Electives save him from serious 
trouble until his good qualities develop or become 
known. No longer can the hostility of a whole 
class swell around an instructor till it bursts into 
storm. The courses are elective, and the humor- 
ous undergraduate who did not take the odious 
course remarks to his grumbling chum who did, 
''Well, it serves you right for electing him when 
you could have taken Tommy," (Tommy being the 
''most popular" professor of the year). 

Horning, an unpleasant custom seldom war- 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 10 



o 



ranted by even the crudest justice, was deliber- 
ately and definitely abandoned by the undergrad- 
uate body about twenty-five years ago, and the 
faith has been kept ever since. 

I was mediseval enough in college life and in- 
struction to behold and even to share in some of 
the obsolete methods of forcing good order. I 
have seen with pain a president of the college 
work his way to the center of a rush and emerge 
therefrom with the massive club of contention 
called a cane, while members of the faculty hov- 
ered on the edges of the disturbance ordering men 
by name to desist. I have seen another president 
intercept a cane and its escort of mighty men, and 
by force (constructively) take possession of the 
stick and foil the stalwart combat troops. I have 
seen a president repeatedly enter the Green to 
shoo away students who were passing ball or 
playing tennis during study hours — a painful 
duty which no one else seemed disposed to under- 
take. And — worse luck — I have been re- 
peatedly summoned on the jjosse comitatus, ''to 
assist the President in the Education and Govern- 
ment of the Students," to maintain order, and 
especially to interrupt some merry and porous 
group engaged in absorbing the product of Bel- 
lows Falls from a keg in Bedbug Alley or back 
of Culver. It was all wrong; but these presidents 
lacked moral courage to upset the precedents 
handed down from earlier times, though no one 
could charge them with lack of any other kind of 
courage. 



104 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Doubtless there are occasions in the history of 
every college when the highest authority must 
intervene for good order. The occasion comes 
when, by reason of some special excitement or 
provocation, the students, for whom the college is 
to some extent responsible, threaten the peace and 
order of the community. Then, if the dean is 
too light a weight for the emergency, the duty 
may fall upon some highly respected member of 
the faculty or even upon the president. There 
are modern instances. But these are not oc- 
casions for the use or show of physical force by 
college officers. 

The time has gone by let us hope, and in hoping 
touch wood to confound the jinx, when college 
faculties find it necessary to execute severe justice 
by the wholesale upon ten, twenty, half a hundred 
at a time. I have known it done. I have been 
one of a tribunal without a dissenting vote. But 
with what is known as afterwisdom I feel that 
there was something wrong about it. Can it be 
that in such discipline there was a prompting of 
human irritation? Was there a feeling that the 
law must be maintamed even if it broke some 
one's suspenders? I know there was the mort- 
main of precedent. For instance, *'It has always 
been our custom to separate from college any 
young man detected under the influence of in- 
toxicating drink." I may have assented to that 
notion once; I do not now. And let no one jump 
to the conclusion that I favor or condone inebria- 
tion. But youth is a time of experiment, and if 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 105 

an adolescent experiments once with a dangerous 
drug to his physical and mental detriment the 
lesson may be very valuable. At any rate he is 
not a danger to society until he repeats, thus sub- 
stituting illustration for experiment. 

But granting that in these cases of multiple 
execution there was no avoidance of the next step 
when the crisis arrived, I firmly believe that in 
nearly all such college convulsions the wrong 
chemicals had been mixed, or the right chemicals 
had been left unmixed, by earlier carelessness or 
clumsiness. College lads are like lambs or like 
hornets according to the way you take them, and 
their ideas of what is fair and just are often sur- 
prising to their elders. Once a learned and 
amiable member of the faculty — not the one you 
think I mean — and his classes were furnishing 
the college an illustration of mutual incompati- 
bility, and I was one of a faculty committee to 
meet representatives of the most riotous class in 
an effort to save the situation. But their hearts 
were hard to our statements. ''He doesn't even 
keep order in his classes," they said! 

In dealing with them it should be remembered 
or known that when they are calm they are rea- 
sonable, therefore reason like a vaccine should get 
in its work before the contagion of excitement. 
When responsibility is placed upon them they 
take it as a sign that they have put on the toga of 
manhood, hence an advantage of responsible 
student councils. Marvelous rumors, fairy tales 
or garbled verities, float about the college, potent 



106 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

for antagonisms, hence the wisdom of actively 
spreading the truth abroad. There are a few, and 
only a few, affairs in college management which 
it is best to hold in secret. 

The attitude of the public towards the collegian 
is usually manifested by ferocious growling until 
it comes to a showdown, when a sudden gentle- 
ness develops. ''We mustn't be too hard on the 
boys; we were boys ourselves once," is the idea. 
If more of the public could see them in their 
normal haunts, where the mass are quiet, orderly 
and busy, their judgment would be better bal- 
anced. The student has nerves; and he some- 
times bays the moon. He is subject to lunar 
rages which arise from dead calm, swell almost 
to mob violence, and subside without a trace. 
His offenses against the public are noise, often 
out of place but not really criminal, and sins 
against property — damage, destruction, appro- 
priation, failure to meet obligation. From the re- 
sulting predicaments he usually escapes on his 
own terms — settling the bill. Less childish of- 
fenses are often condoned. Once upon a time 
the lone policeman of Hanover, in the discharge 
of his duty, undertook the arrest of an erring 
citizen. The plaints of the malefactor came to the 
ears of a group of playful students who made 
game of the officer of the law by roping and other- 
wise impeding him with some roughness. The 
constable, who was plucky and efficient but not 
sympathetic, landed his quarry and then lodged 
information higher up against his persecutors. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 107 

It was necessary to sustain the officer, and the 
case went to the grand jury before the session of 
the county court. The grand jury dismissed it on 
the ground that it was only a college boys' prank. 
It was a lamentable failure of justice towards one 
of the most unforgivable of minor offenses, and 
yet there were law-abiding citizens even upon the 
faculty who were glad the case went no farther. 
We have known, have we not, of instructions is- 
sued to the police in a large city to be very care- 
ful of the college crowds publishing joy or drown- 
ing sorrow after a big football game? The law, 
the police regulations, cannot reach with any 
evenness the college student in minor misconduct. 
Public opinion will not permit it. I am sure that 
the same could be said of public opinion and col- 
lege discipline, if the public had an impulsive vote 
with the half-knowledge which reaches it. 

Itemized, the details which may call for censure 
or excision are not numerous . 

First of all is the ordeal of scholarly sufficiency. 
There is objection to this test, but I do not think 
the objection is reasonable. Whenever Hercules 
or Sampson is ejected someone gets harsh ex- 
postulations. The parents of ''Junior" may find 
excellent reasons why the dear boy failed. But 
after all it is not difficult to meet requirements 
which consist so largely in being and doing what 
all, if they choose, may be and do. If Samson 
and Hercules and Junior will not, or in rare cases 
cannot, cheer the instructor by their presence, get 
in the theme, the report, or the experiment on 



108 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

time, focus attention upon the business of a short 
hour, and study just a little now and then, they 
may properly cede their places to those who will 
perform aright. They are entitled to fair treat- 
ment, and they get even more. Since they are 
perhaps inexperienced in punctiliousness, poorly 
trained at home, and unimpressed by information 
that year after year the College is compelled to go 
on without certain egocentric persons who will 
not do their studies, they need and get most com- 
petent supervision and warning before the final 
disaster. They depart upon the record of that 
which they have left undone, but always with op- 
portunity for appeal and a hearing. 

Extremely different is the case of Bill Sikes 
who offends against the criminal code. He may 
gamble, steal, do acts of violence, or become the 
cause of public scandal. He is very uncommon; 
but when one considers the thousands who pass 
through any large college, it is not strange that in 
certain circles his memory is fresh though not 
fragrant. Some say that the law ought to get 
him, and occasionally it does, but I do not think 
the college ever turns him over to the law. It 
even postpones action that might be prejudicial, 
if legal processes are in operation. He cannot 
stay in college to be a center of vice or crime, and 
yet his case is now understood to be difficult and 
delicate. He may need proper food, or the care 
of a wise physician, or merely to grow up. To 
make public his disgrace might ruin him for life ; 
so where the matter is not already notorious Bill's 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 109 

misdeeds are not published abroad, and he is 
given the chance, in absence, which may, and 
often does, restore him to sound manhood. 

From the pranks of a crowd of students re- 
leased from routine duty the beholder might sus- 
pect a good deal of tomfoolery in the recitations 
and lectures. But this would be a mistake. It 
is not considered good sport. The individual who 
tries it makes himself disliked all around. Com- 
binations against scholarly sobriety have been 
known, and that professor or young instructor 
who has allowed his class room to become by prec- 
edent or tradition the home of horseplay or 
comedy has small chance of recovery. It may be 
funny to have a whole class rise as one man, take 
off their coats and hang them over the seat, and 
a little later rise again and resume them, all with 
perfect gravity and without visible signal, but it 
is not intellectually stimulating. 

"Cutting" in a body is obsolete as a game, be- 
cause, with the liberal allowance of cuts and the 
definition of their use, there is no great fun in 
lawfully using up a cut which may be much more 
valuable at another time. 

Leaving out of consideration, then, delinquents 
in scholarship, who are attended to in a well-de- 
fined and impartial manner, college discipline of 
the present time applies to the rather rare cases 
called criminal, but requiring most careful treat- 
ment, and minor eruptions of lawlessness and dis- 
order upon which the public looks with great 
leniency, and which the sinner gleefully recalls in 



110 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

the hearing of his sons in later years. It would 
be difficult to draw a sharp line between the 
malum prohibitum and the Tnalum per se upon 
which President Smith used to discourse. A 
malum per se is naturally a malum prohibitum; 
and a Tnalum prohibitum (of which the fewer the 
better) easily becomes a malum per se because it 
is prohibitum. The simplest mind can discern the 
difference between throwing snow-balls in the 
college yard and cheating in examination, or 
howling at the moving pictures and burglary, but 
there might be argument about the immorality of 
baiting a policeman, obtaining apples directly 
from the orchard, or breaking the speed laws. 

And where, by the way, is the ''Freshman 
Bible"* which, with its prohibition of cards, and 
of musical instruments during study hours, and 
of disrespect to college officers, pointed out to us 
the straight and narrow way? Gone, mute as the 
harp that once through Tara's halls. 

And that list of nicely graduated penalties is 
probably now on a high shelf in the safe that 
keeps the records. ''Reprimanded by the Presi- 
dent?" It isn't done. The youth who needs it 
will hear plain language in an official voice, but 
not because he has been voted a reprimand. When 
you consider, it is a difficult task to administer a 
well-constructed and powerful reprimand to a 
polite young man with shining hair who trust- 



* This does not refer to the excellent Handbook issued 
by the D. C. A., which might be called "The Freshman Bible, 
Jr." 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 111 

fully responds to your invitation to a dual meet, 
without so softening it with the milk of human 
kindness as to take out its sting and its official 
tone. But humble '^probation" has grown to be 
the mightiest word in the disciplinary armament. 
Probation is nothing; but some way entangled in 
the word is complete abstention from all those in- 
terests which make it worth while to go to col- 
lege, football, dramatics and the rest. The pun- 
ishment fits the crime. "Rustication," mollified 
as it was by the kindly clergyman and the village 
belles, is no more. And there is good old irra- 
tional ''suspension," gone. Not that it could not 
be, but it is not. It put the sufferer and his in- 
structors at a disadvantage for the remainder of 
his college course. When he must go he is ''sepa- 
rated from college," the dreadful uttermost pen- 
alty of "expulsion" being so rare as to be almost 
unknown to me. But in some peculiar cases, such, 
for instance, as seem to arise from physical rather 
than moral pathology, father is given "leave to 
withdraw." 

Although I have heard the mode of procedure 
in the case of college misdemeanors questioned 
and even criticised, I have never heard it defined. 
I doubt if it has definition in terms; but all 
methods of judicial action are of interest, and this 
is a development away from execrable methods of 
dealing with the young. In theory, it is the action 
of a body whose prejudgement is favorable rather 
than adverse or neutral to the respondent. Pun- 
ishment of the culprit is not so much the aim as 



112 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

protection of his associates. The lasting and 
often unjust effects of publicity are avoided. The 
compulsions of criminal courts are absent. 
Special weight is granted to the statements of the 
individual under examination. And the process 
is between man and man without professional 
representatives. 

The time was (within my memory) when the 
whole faculty were judge, jury and executioner, 
often to the disadvantage of the respondent, and 
with occasional burlesque embellishments. A 
selected group administer justice now, with 
reference, occasionally, of peculiar cases to the 
president or dean. No student is condemned 
without opportunity for a hearing, but as there 
is no authority for bringing his body before the 
tribunal he may not escape judgment by refusing 
to appear. He may be confronted by accusers; 
usually he is not, as accusers of students are very 
reluctant to appear. He is expected to answer 
truthfully for himself, but is not asked or en- 
couraged to give information concerning other 
students. Unless there is good evidence that he 
is lying his word is accepted. Since he gets the 
benefit of presumption of truthfulness, lying is a 
grave offense. 

Plainly this is very different procedure from 
that of the police court. It is not public. It com- 
pels the presence of neither respondent nor wit- 
nesses. It has not the sanction of the oath. It 
does not give the respondent the benefit (if it is 
a benefit) of silence. It is more like family 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 113 

discipline. But it does substantial justice without 
publicity. Possibly culprits have escaped by 
reason of their own false testimony, but in long 
experience I have never known an instance when 
I thought the innocent was convicted. 

"College Discipline" ordinarily has reference to 
the corrective action of a professorial operating 
force upon more or less raw material of students ; 
there is, however, a re-action only to be suggested 
delicately here. But at times apprentices have 
been put in charge of our valuable young men, 
who had less fitness for their job than a wise cat- 
tle grower would require for his horses or his 
steers. They quickly learn, or lost to sight be- 
come to memory dear. 

More than a hundred years ago, and therefore 
safe to name, naughty professors Dean and 
Carter of the University made a raid on the Social 
Friends' library, and, caught by students of the 
College, were placed in durance and finally led to 
their homes by an escort of students, four to each 
professor. There were breaking of doors, big 
stick, arrests, but no penalties. 

In more recent times an instructor of a little 
brief authority — we can quote without hesita- 
tion an alleged experience so different from that 
of the rest of us as to be valueless for evidence — 
announced in the class-room that he had heard 
that Dartmouth students were a rough set, but 
that having expected to find some gentlemen 
among them he had not found one. I confess to 
a constant and vain regret that some of his hear- 



114 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

ers who had not yet attained to the stature of per- 
fect gentlemen, did not take him out and stand 
him on his head in the snow. As a member of the 
faculty I think I should have voted, "Not guilty, 
but don't do it again." 

In the progress of time nothing has developed 
in college government so wholesome and genuine 
as self-control through a representative group. 
It supplements the power of the faculty at a point 
of weakness, though I doubt if it ever could or 
would displace wholly the authority of that body. 
The intense, absurd, but normally harmless at- 
tention paid to freshmen at the beginning of the 
college year, dangerous from lack of any natural 
limit in duration or repetition, is, as experience 
shows, sensibly controlled by a strong group of 
college leaders. And the same is true of some 
bad customs that thrive in the dark. I heard with 
great joy of the robust members of a student 
council, who were in charge, administering a good 
old-fashioned ''licking" to a cur who used the 
buckle end of his belt-strap upon defenseless 
victims in the rather doubtful ordeal of ''running 
the gauntlet." Such leaders can give powerful 
support to honesty in college work. They have 
checked disorders that threatened to become riots. 
Mental and moral defectives and those likely to 
be judged criminals should, it would seem, wisely 
be left to more mature discrimination. 

Opinions concerning the present status of 
athletics, and of the comparative morality in the 
College today and forty or fifty years ago are not 
within the plan and scope of this book. 



VII 

RES ANGUSTAE 

Friend Squoddy, with the caution of an elderly 
person on an icy slope, was feeling his way 
through a line or two of Latin poetry. It was 
sight reading for old Squoddy because Professor 
Parker, for once deceiving the trustful, had 
shuffled the whole pack and Squoddy had recited 
the day before. ''Res angustae domi, — things 
— narrow things — of the house," he extem- 
porized. The good professor, with a little haste 
but with his unfailing courtesy and without even 
a groan of anguish, interposed, "Well, well, it may 
be so ; it may be so ; but don't you think 'straight- 
ened circumstances at home' would give us a bet- 
ter idea of the poet's meaning?" Squoddy paused 
to reflect and to take a swift backward kick at 
the neighbor who had driven his toe sharply into 
the hollow of Squoddy's knee, and then with 
obvious admiration accepted the professor's ren- 
dering. The professor beamed with joy and cov- 
ered Squoddy's presumable embarrassment by the 
apt and sympathetic comment that many a young 
man pursuing his way through college knew the 
meaning of straitened circumstances at home 
and of the sacrifices made for his education. 

From an horizon of straitened circumstances 
a day of small things naturally arises and con- 
tinues. So it was at Dartmouth during the major 

(115) 



116 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

part of the years since my first acquaintance. 
The condition was even as bad as in the story told 
me by an old grad of less than fifty and more 
than forty years ago: ''When I came to college 
we lived in Harmony, but my father soon moved 
to Boston. For two years, however, I gave in my 
name for the catalog as a resident of Harmony; 
but the third year the Prof, said when he was 
getting the enrollment, 'As long as your father 
really lives in Boston won't you put in your name 
as from there? We haven't got any one from 
Boston, and we want to show at least one.' " This 
was worse than the destitution of the drunkard's 
home. The children called for bread and spinach 
and calories and vitamines in vain, and as a last 
hope they cried out for pie. "and there was no 
PIE IN THE house!" There was no one from 
Boston in the College! I believe this, so I have 
not looked it up in the catalog. 

But straitened circumstances and the day of 
small things may be rich in satisfaction and good 
cheer. Everything depends upon the proportion 
in which the tranquillity and happiness of life are 
derived from things or persons or ideas. 

During the later period of penury, which ex- 
tended well into the 90's, the salary of a "full 
professor" had risen to $2,000, and this with re- 
lation to the conditions of work and to the college 
expenses in general was liberal. Rightly the pro- 
portion followed the custom of the body and gave 
preference to the brains. These salaries were the 
consummation of three months' hope and trust; 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 117 

but there was no assured pay-day even then. As 
a personal favor however, the genial treasurer 
would advance a few dollars to loosen the finan- 
cial stringency and set new money in circulation. 
Whether or not this $2,000 was more than what- 
ever they do get today, in relation to what it 
would buy, is an open question. Measured by 
certain expenses which do not make the whole of 
life, it was enough. We were clothed and warmed 
and fed. Measured by the needs of scholars who 
should live in the world and be a part of it, it fell 
short. 

There was food enough for hospitality, and at 
those delightful supper parties served at separate 
tables, the quality and abundance was up to the 
best New England standard ; for there were not- 
able housewives in those days, who provided an 
excess of exceedingly good victuals which it was 
the duty of the loquacious sisterhood in the 
kitchen to keep from spoiling. Help was easily 
obtained, and rarely was a family without one or 
two maids who gladly allowed themselves to be 
lent on these festal occasions. These parties, 
which were numerous in the autumn when one or 
two new members had been added to the faculty, 
had for entertainment after the dishes had been 
cleared away conversation, music, charades which 
we thought very clever, and little games in which 
the wits were caused to function pleasantly, like 
writing impromptu verses or presenting brief 
literary efforts, selected or original. And even if 
I am the only one left to say so, I will declare that 



118 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

hospitality, music, and gambols of the mind are 
more satisfactory sports for intelligent beings 
than moving pictures, cards or dancing. This 
statement is only comparative, and contains no 
positive denunciation of the latter class. 

Private hospitality had abundant opportunity 
in those days, and met it well. As you see at 
Commencement the long retinue of the 10-years 
class — the wives keeping up with the procession 
regardless of heat or fatigue, proudly flourishing 
the showy parasols provided by the class tax, and 
the little Billikins here and there inspecting 
daddy's college whither they are coming by and 
by — you wish to know where these welcome 
ornaments of the occasion were stowed away in 
the days of yore when there were neither dormi- 
tories to give them shelter nor College Hall to 
give them food. Well, they were not expected, 
and they met the expectation. But there were 
guests, and Commencement was a more intimate 
family affair than at present. When the scant 
accommodations of the Dartmouth Hotel had 
been exhausted, the homes of the village were 
opened, naturally for the more mature alumni 
with their wives, if these chose to come. It was 
perhaps as much a reunion of friends as of 
classes. The young fellows could look out for 
themselves ; and this they did without any vow to 
silence. Then to fill the meeting-house and the 
village a host appeared in the morning and 
vanished at night. The Commencement ceremony 
was a five-hours' orgy of oratory, during which 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 119 

the auditory tide ebbed and flowed and was an 
hungered. Some yielded to necessity and ex- 
changed coin for sandwiches, peanuts or pie. But 
the ladies of the faculty and other friendly per- 
sons spread lunches, abundant, delicious and free, 
and sent out to collect the unfed. The lunch must 
be eaten. One of my older colleagues arrested me, 
only a resident, upon the street, with an urgent 
invitation to go around and eat his wife's lunch 
and thus lessen her worry lest too few should 
come in and partake. But the multitude was not 
backward, and the lunches were seldom neglected. 
My wife once asked a senior — he will not see 
this — to bring in his friends, if any were here. 
He came, and he brought thirteen with him who 
ate and went away satisfied. 

Taxes were a strangely unimportant item. The 
first tax I paid on the house I now occupy was 
$18.10; the last was over $200. But those con- 
veniences, or as we now think necessities, for 
which taxes pay were also unimportant. The 
standard of living was a standard of isolation not 
commensurable with the life of the remote world 
of fashion. One can see now that the professors 
who gave the College its strength suffered from 
their inability to meet with men of similar in- 
terests. Good, learned, self-denying teachers as 
they were, their influence would have been more 
virile if they could have conveyed to their 
students the impression that they had ever been 
out of Hanover. The salaries did not encourage 
families, and one at least who brought up a group 



120 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

of children can testify that notwithstanding un- 
desirable economy, he was unable for many years 
to meet the necessary expenses except by outside 
earnings. 

If instruction represented the height of wise 
expenditure, administration represented the depth 




"Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" 

of distressing insufficiency. Today you see a fine 
building, well-equipped, and wholly used for ad- 
ministrative purposes. What had the College at 
the time and during the period to which I refer? 
Nothing; absolutely nothing. With enough per- 
severance the treasurer might be found in his law 
office over the old bank building; and the presi- 
dent was often in his study at the house. Except 
for such domestic arrangements as he might 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 121 

make, no member of the faculty had an office or 
anything corresponding thereto. He might have 
a study, and that, with a longtailed coat and a 
book, was enough. At present there is a consid- 
erable library building, inadequate, but storing 
or distributing 150,000 books, and capably ad- 
ministered. The college library of those days, 
well-hidden in the second story of Reed Hall, con- 




Professor of Dust and Ashes 

tained 17,000 books, and no one knew when the 
lone librarian would drop around and unlock it; 
I suppose there were regular hours, but who 
would expect us to know them! The Society li- 
braries offered freer access to about an equal 
number of books. We drew for vacation choice 
by lot, and for the long vacation we could take 
away fourteen books, — seven from 1 to the 
highest number, and seven more from the highest 
number back to 1. 



122 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

At present the College gives steady employment 
to about 175 who do not have class-room duties; 
fifty years ago it had one full-time employe, the 
worthy but overloaded Professor . of Dust and 
Ashes. Student help, which ranged from extreme 
fidelity to utter shif tlessness — only it was im- 
possible to tell beforehand which it was going to 
be — was employed on a part time scale ; and 
carpenters, painters, and the like, when needed 
were hired for the job. Considering the far-flung 
precincts of the material college, the heating, 
lighting, feeding, the stupendous current details 
which enter into the daily book-keeping, the cor- 
respondence, the publications, the records which 
become history or statistics, only a rash person 
would declare, without expert examination, that 
too many are engaged in the business as dis- 
tinguished from the instruction of the College. 
If, as is reported, it costs $8,000 a year to main- 
tain the daily roll of attendance, one can at least 
imagine an institution in which this expense, 
made necessary because of delinquents, could be 
applied to something more productive, and the 
burden of non-attendance carried by the records 
of scholarship. 

But what was the condition in a college set for 
about one-fifth of the present number? The 
President wrote his own letters, aided now and 
then by some member of his family or by a 
student who wrote a fair hand and could be 
trusted. One student manipulated and pedaled 
the little organ. There was no superintendent of 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 123 

buildings, but upon some member of the faculty 
was wished the office of "Inspector"; $100 was 
added to his salary and he was bid go to it — let 
the rooms, choose or help choose the wall papers, 
appoint the student janitors to sweep and tend 
the fires, invite the artisans to paint or paper or 
saw wood, meet the emergencies and take the 
blame. Another unhappy scholar was picked out 
and compelled to be ''Clerk of the Faculty," upon 
the same terms; and upon him fell the duties of 
keeping the faculty records, the absences and the 
individual marks, and of making out the standing 
of the students three times a year. These term 
marks he naturally gave out in the simplest man- 
ner by handing a written list to some convenient 
professor who distributed them in the class-room. 
In my catalog of 1868-1869 I find in penciled 
entries the marks of the freshman class of the 
time, ranging from 1.11 to 2.59 on the weird 
scale of 1 . for perfect and 5 . for zero. I note 
also that of 80 freshmen of that year only 16 
were in college rooms. 

There was no sabbatical year or half year. Nor 
had the generous subsidy to aid professors to be- 
come acquainted with their learned and jovial 
fellows at the annual meetings of the societies for 
the concentration of knowledge been thought of. 
Delegates to various organizations, less numerous 
than now, paid their own expenses or stayed at 
home; and a good many pairs of children's shoes 
could be bought for the money which one of these 
trips cost. Notice how essential it is for contact 



124 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

with modernity that artists and speakers of many 
kinds and grades should bring their talents to 
Hanover ; these advantages were not for the small 
college and those who loved it. 

Just what became of the professors who re- 
signed before they died is not apparent. There 
were not many. In Lord's History we read that 
Dr. Sanborn, resigning in 1881 with insufficient 
savings after forty-three years' service, was as- 
sisted by an annual $500 contributed by friends. 
A president of the College who retired in 1892 
was given a pension of $1750 which was after- 
wards cut to $1200. And this, I think, is the only 
case of a pension by Dartmouth College until Mr. 
Carnegie came to the rescue in 1906. 

For audience rooms there was the meeting- 
house for preferred, the old chapel for common, 
and the gymnasium for special assemblies. Rob- 
inson Hall was not even a dream, and such few 
student organizations as there were floated 
around without a home, except the Theological 
Society which had a room with idols and things in 
it. College Hall has wrought a marvelous change 
in the humanity of the College. Before its con- 
struction the College was in the condition of a 
home without kitchen or dining-room — unable to 
nourish its own or to offer hospitality to others. 
Its operation may from time to time justify 
criticisms which should be heeded, but their 
weight is small when one considers what the Com- 
mons has brought about in raising the standard 
of alimentation throughout the village, in promot- 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 125 

ing genial discussion of serious topics, and in en- 
abling the College to be a gracious host to or- 
ganizations from within and without. 

In a former chapter, I have written of the 
primitive conditions of heating, lighting, bathing. 
If these had been the conditions of the civilized 
world at the time they would not have been so 
noteworthy; but they were not. While a little 
hand tub was available to squirt water on a fire 
until the horse-trough was empty or the soft- 
handed fire fighters were themselves pumped out, 
in the cities huge steamers were rushed with 
spectacular action to drown the fires with water. 
At that very time, in my home city, one of these 
roaring monsters bore the name of ''Long John," 
in honor of Mayor John Wentworth, Dartmouth, 
1836. Nor can ignorance of water transmitted in 
aqueducts and applied in hot and cold baths be 
ascribed to a place of ancient learning. Although 
at this time plumbing had not become the royal 
art of the present, all the fixtures of what is often 
called a modern bath room had been in use for 
many years in modern communities. One of our 
professors gained great local renown at a fire of 
long ago. The fire company, discouraged before 
the battle by the heart-breaking work necessary 
to get the quickly-failing pipe-stem stream upon 
the fire, had little of the present efficiency, and 
their feeble and poorly directed efforts finally 
forced a student to explode with a volley of those 
words which at that time were purged of evil in 
print by 2-em dashes in their middle. Professor 



126 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

Wiseman heard it all and placing his hand on the 
young man's shoulder said gravely, 'Thank you, 
sir." 

The Dartmouth was a solemn brown pamphlet 
published monthly, and each editor, having sole 
responsibility for his number, would beg his 
friends for literary contributions. The Aegis, a 
little paper-covered thing of about forty pages, 
was published twice a year. The number issued 
in the summer term of 1870, of which Charles F. 
Richardson was one of the two editors, contains 
lists of the members of the five fraternities which 
continue under the same name, of the Social 
Friends and of the United Fraternity, of the two 
freshman societies, and of the ten members of 
the Handel Society. It lists a ''quintette" which 
was very good — it was rumored, by the way, that 
this quintette glee club had swallow-tailed coats 
which they wore on their infrequent trips, — a 
couple of minor musical organizations, seven 
baseball nines, class officers, a telegraph company, 
three burlesque groups, and the membership of 
the Theological and Missionary Association, in 
which are found the names of Francis Brown, 
Lemuel S. Hastings, Bishops Leonard and Talbot, 
Marvin D. Bisbee, Francis E. Clark, and many 
others since well known in Hanover. (I do not 
know anything that marks more the chasm be- 
tween that world and this than the custom on 
obscure student authority — obscure even now to 
me — of dividing all the members of the faculty 
among the four student prayer meetings on the 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 127 

Day of Prayer for Colleges.) The editorials of 
this Aegis are highly interesting. There is even 
then the call for a bath-room and for elective 
studies. A Commencement earlier than the next 
to the last Thursday in July is prayed for. There 
is an account of the laying of the cornerstone of 
Culver Hall with the statement that the imported 
band's idea of an appropriate tune for the oc- 
casion was, *Tut me in my little bed." There is 
the declaration that ''the building is really to be 
handsome and commodious," and the conclusion, 
*'We had never expected to see with these mortal 
eyes a new building at Dartmouth, and now we 
hope that this one will be followed by a new 
dormitory, a chapel, and all the other buildings 
which have already been commenced on paper." 
Our most proudly exhibited recitation room was 
the North Latin room. If you were to enter 
Dartmouth Hall by the south door, proceed half- 
way through the building, then turn sharply to 
the left and go through the partition wall into 
the lecture room you would be within the shade, 
the astral body as it were, of the North Latin 
room. It had recent settees in place of the 
ancient benches; and I seem to remember large 
photographs upon its walls — the Roman Forum, 
the Coliseum, the Arch of Titus, perhaps. Why 
the South Greek room, similarly situated at the 
other end of the building, was held inferior I do 
not know ; but it was, perhaps because there was 
more flunking in it. On the 2d floor of Dart- 
mouth Hall was the Senior room, of a peculiar 



128 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

sanctity which was fostered if not wholly inspired 
by Dr. Noyes. A recitation room was a recitation 
room, and if there were a chair and a table on a 
platform for the professor and seats for the 
students there would be no occasion for any one 
to boast about Mark Hopkins and the log. 

The time to which I refer — 1868 just now — 
belongs to a period when if an institution of 
learning possessed a laboratory of any kind for 
student work it had the right to point with pride. 
So far as I have been able to learn Dartmouth had 
none. There are a few rays of circumstantial evi- 
dence that somewhere and somehow the students 
in the Chandler School had a little ''practical" 
chemistry, but I have never found out where or 
how. There was one course fairly in the same 
class with laboratory work — field work in sur- 
veying required of the whole sophomore class. 
Imagine being privileged to seek knowledge and 
skill out of doors in the early fall, while yet the 
sun was warm, the grass green, the foliage un- 
thinned, and the fuliginous river fog foretold a 
gladsome day! The class was divided into 
squads of eight, with director and register com- 
mittee on observation and calculation appointed 
by the professor on the basis of marks in mathe- 
matics, and a committee on apples appointed by 
the squad on the basis of specialized acquisitive- 
ness. And neither committee was to be disturbed 
in its duties by other members of the squad. 
There was no occasion to worry because the Col- 
lege had no ill-smelling laboratories. A little later 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 129 

by arrangement with the Agricultural College 
there was opportunity for seniors to have some 
laboratory work in Chemistry in the newly built 
Culver Hall. 

The village had no welcome for newcomers. I 
mean the village, and not its inhabitants. The 
writer was told by Treasurer F. Chase, with 
prophetic truth, that to get a house he would have 
to wait for someone to die. All the houses were 
occupied, and the land since available for build- 
ing purposes was held in large tracts and was 
not then for sale. Nearly, if not quite, half the 
residences of the village are on lands then held 
for farms or hay fields. President Bartlett, who 
came to the College in 1877, was no better off 
than other intruders into the closed village, and 
for several years went from one temporary 
shelter to another — the Dartmouth Hotel, Mrs. 
Thomas Crosby's, Professor Emerson's during his 
absence in Europe — until at his prompting the 
Trustees, with the purchase of the Noyes house, 
established the custom of maintaining a home for 
the president of the College. 

One of the very good customs of the days of 
small things was the Senior Party given by the 
president a few weeks before Commencement. 
Personal invitations were sent to the Seniors and 
such friends of theirs as might be in Hanover at 
the time, to the social element in the village, and 
to friends of the College in neighboring towns — 
Lebanon, West Lebanon and Hartford. It was 



130 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

always an interesting question which and how 
many of these bespoken ones would reply to the 
polite notes of invitation. The seniors appeared 
in reasonable numbers ; the guests from the neigh- 
boring villages were at pains to be present; 
''mixers" were appointed to stimulate circulation, 
and the usual good time was had by all. The 
party was held in the president's house when he 
had one. During the time when he was house- 
less one of the best of the gatherings was held in 
the old 'Thilosophical Room" in Reed Hall, and 
members of the president's family took off their 
coats or rolled up their sleeves and ladled out ice- 
cream for the multitude. The Senior Party per- 
tained to the old style of home-made hospitality, 
to the simple era when people found entertain- 
ment in meeting one another and joy in exercising 
their own wits. It brought to the College a very 
desirable group of neighbors, and recognized, if 
only tacitly, the common migration from the old 
Connecticut homes. Within a few weeks one of 
the oldest of the guests was recalling with great 
pleasure these occasions which used to bring him 
and his wife on social missions to Hanover. With 
the great growth of the College this form of inter- 
community had to pass away. Extinct also, like 
the old Pine and the Senior Party, is the pleasant 
custom of faculty reception evenings, which for 
a time more than half of the members of the 
classes appreciated by their presence. We have 
the omelet, but the eggs are broken. 

In June, 1878, the Trustees appointed an Asso- 




X 

« 
OS 

s 

o 
o 

a: 

U 

a 
o 



132 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

ciate Professor of Chemistry at a salary of $1500. 
He was associated, because Dr. Oliver Payson 
Hubbard was Professor of Chemistry, though for 
many years his relation to the College had been 
as lecturer in the Medical School. This associate 
professor after using up a leave of absence, ar- 
rived in March and began to look around for 
those material objects which go with a professor 
of chemistry. He found to his surprise that the 
College was unable to offer him one square foot 
of separate and distinct territory, and that his 
outfit, when he found a place to put it, would con- 
sist of a little apparatus of small value, the 
equity of the College in stock held by the Agri- 
cultural College, and what he could buy with an 
appropriation of $200. The work of the depart- 
ment was to be done in Culver Hall, a building of 
joint ownership, but in the custody of the New 
Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Me- 
chanic Arts. It surely presented a situation for 
controversy and real trouble. There was one 
lecture room and one laboratory room and two 
men teaching chemistry to two distinct and im- 
miscible groups of students. Hours, of course, 
had to be arranged for the use of the lecture room, 
and a gentleman's agreement was negotiated to 
leave no illustrative material around in one an- 
other's way. An attempt was made to get along 
with opposite ends of the laboratory, but, as that 
proved impracticable from the easy mixing of 
movables, a slight partition running half way to 
the ceiling was set up, and the associate professor 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 133 

found himself in possession of 24 tables and a 
closet, with standing-room only. This condition 
of two families in the same house continued until 
the removal of the New Hampshire College from 
Hanover in 1893. That it existed without friction 
or accumulated ill feeling is not wholly due to the 
pacific nature of the parties thus tied together. 
It was like the case of the female whose relative 
by marriage when asked if she was reconciled to 
departing from this life, replied: "She jolly well 
had to be." 

Slowly, very slowly, almost inch by inch, the 
chemistry department pervaded, infiltrated Culver 
Hall. Its progress was aided by the imperfect 
ventilation of the building; and aliens, chemically 
speaking, gradually manifested an active prefer- 
ence for the nameless smells of a close room 
somewhere else to the clean and namable though 
perhaps too distinct odors of scientific prepara- 
tion there diffused. The building became un- 
popular. And thus and otherwise, from nothing, 
in the course of many years Chemistry got pos- 
session of the whole building ; and the migration 
into the beautiful new Steele Laboratory was but 
the natural translation. 

Culver was not heated by steam or by anything 
else. The impediments to freezing were stoves 
needing constant feeding which they did not get, 
and a viciously inefficient wood furnace under the 
laboratory. Many a time the professor, after the 
manner of the district school, was compelled to 
call for volunteers from his class to accompany 



134 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

him to the cellar for fuel, generally getting a 
hearty response from the whole class. It froze 
in the laboratory, only occasionally hard enough 
to split the pipes; but, owing to the necessity of 
meeting an early schedule and of avoiding con- 
flicts, much preparation had to be made before 
the classes came from chapel, with fingers so 
numb that the sight of blood from a cut or scratch 
was the first intimation of injury. For a time 
there was gas, Hanover gas, that peculiar semi- 
vaporous substance made on the spot and dis- 
tributed to consumers at $10 a thousand until ruin 
stared maker and user in the face. After that 
for a long time the only heat for chemical pur- 
poses was obtained from little alcohol lamps. The 
professor was absolutely without assistance even 
from a helping janitor. But he had only to pre- 
pare and take down experiments and illustrations 
for the class-room, wash the dishes, make up the 
reagents, give out all materials needed by 
students in the laboratory, keep up supplies and 
accounts and records, tend the fires in emergen- 
cies, dust the tables, circulate among the workers 
and catch them by intuition just before they 
made a fatal blunder, examine the note-books, 
have recitations and lectures, lay out courses 
which could be carried on under the limited con- 
ditions, and all the time strive to build up a reg- 
ular department of chemistry. Oh, it was a busy 
life! At times, as a nice little family accumu- 
lated, there would be for a treat a picnic down to 
Culver to unpack invoices of chemicals or ap- 




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136 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

paratus. Relief came gradually, by volunteer 
student help, by students paid by the hour, by 
graduate students, by a full time helper, a prac- 
tical janitor, and so on to the present ac- 
complished staff. 

I should like to enlarge upon the two little 
stoves at the south end of the Meeting-house with 
the rods of dripping pipe under the galleries de- 
livering what was left of the smoke into the twin 
chimneys on the north, upon the choir loft over 
the door, upon the Thursday evenings rigidly re- 
served for the mid-week meetings to the exclusion 
of all other entertainments, sacred or profane. I 
should like to tell of the excitement among the 
required attendants at the Sunday services when 
Dr. Leeds solemnly said, ''I pass," or rhetorically 
raised his voice to cry, **Wake, Christian 
brother !" ; or when the visiting clergyman in tell- 
ing of his service at the State's prison said, ''They 
were all there; they had to be." The social and 
inexpensive decoration of the church for Com- 
mencement, and the rich bouquets presented to 
the speakers are items of interest. Much might 
be said of the forlorn lot of the sick student — 
for measles, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping 
cough and something just as good as the grip 
flourished then — shut up in his dirty room and 
in his unchanged bed and tended only by his 
kindly but erratic fellows; and of the winter 
hibernation with occasional giddy awakening 
when Anna Dickinson, General Kilpatrick, 
Camilla Urso, or the Jubilee Singers broke in; 



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138 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

and of the inevitable February row of some kind 
in the College. But there must be consideration 
of the limitations of space, time and patience. 

Times change and we have changed with them. 
Those were hard and happy days, and their recol- 
lection calls for no pity. 



VIII 

TEACHING SCHOOL 

Beloved Reader, has Teaching School ever hap- 
pened into your life? If so, you will understand 
why I take my pen in hand to write of it as one 
of those casual jobs like Sawing Wood or Wash- 
ing Windows or Digging Potatoes which may en- 
gage the attention of great intellects for a short 
time without lasting damage. 

I do not now refer to the occupancy, with that 
consciously noble feeling, of a college chair or 
demi-chair. I do not mean the jovian, also 
saturnine, pinnacle of head-master. It is not 
teaching school to preside over a fifth grade room 
in a well-ordered department store of learning, 
where violence is unknown, and whither the 
janitor, the principal, or the policeman can be 
summoned at a minute's notice. 

Teaching School belongs to those days when 
our country was young or mid-Victorian, and 
when the primary qualification was not knowl- 
edge, but the strong right hand, the power to 
manage, the possession of ''good discipline." A 
large wallop was worth more than many good in- 
tentions; and if some high-minded pacifist was 
propelled rapidly from the warm schoolroom into 
a chilly bank of snow, an immense guffaw broke 
forth around the red-hot stove in the store. But 
they were fair-minded in the store, and the black 

(139) 



140 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

eye of any aspiring youth who some way failed 
to remove the teacher from his proper scene of 
labor was just as good a joke; and the spokesman 
of the Diet of Crackers would allow, ''thet thur 
wuz sum chanst of them young divvils gettin' an 
eddication after all". 

Anyone might try his hand at the job; but it 
was not outside of the rules for the teacher to 
know something, since the only entrance condi- 
tion to the winter school was living within walk- 
ing distance. While the teacher was sure to have 
a class in the simple literature of ''The cat has 
got a rat. It is a fat rat. Do not put the fat rat 
in my hat," many a youth who was to be heard 
from later cherished a longing to set his teeth 
into the binomial theorem, or to read Caesar even 
if he had to stay after school to get the time. It 
was doubtful whether it was right to parse the 
Bible, but if the teacher could not parse any word 
that Shakespeare ever set down, it was told in 
the homes — with joy if he had not made friends, 
with disappointment if they liked him. He was 
expected to solve any puzzle in arithmetic at 
once, or at any rate, ''as soon as he had time." 
And sly old codgers who played checkers at the 
tavern, often as late as nine o'clock, used to copy 
from the puzzle department of the weekly Gazette 
fearful problems in compound interest, the rule 
of three, alligation, or about such sinful doings 
as buying huckleberries by dry measure and 
selling them as liquids, and send them in by one 
of the boys. Mental arithmetic, like fish, was held 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 141 

to be a great source of mental power; and the 
teacher, at a moment's notice, had to put together 
or undo these tangled numbers: "If 18 is Vo of 
-/g of V4 of some number, what is Vo of 5 times 
the same number?" Or the details of building 
such and such a wall with so many men in 20 
days, and then hurrying up the job to get a 
multiplied wall built in half the time by how 
many men; occasionally infesting the situation 
with boys, with the assumption that it took three 
boys to do the work of one man. He was obliged 
to spend one painful evening in checkers at the 
tavern, though the experts there assembled had 
his measure after the third move. "College was 
a darned onpractical place," they agreed among 
themselves. But they would hardly ever allude 
to the matter again in the teacher's presence, ex- 
cept now and then to speak with wooden faces of 
"thet ther night when we hed them checker 
games, y'know," or archly to remark of the 
preacher or some other worthy, "He's all right, 
but he can't play checkers for sour apples." 

It appears from the catalog for 1868-1869 that 
the fall term of the College closed Thursday 
night, November 26th, for a vacation of six weeks. 
It does not appear that after the vacation came a 
term of fifteen weeks from which the student, if 
properly excused, might take the first six weeks 
for teaching without the burden of making up. 
This was the time when the knights of the ruler 
and the spelling book went forth to carry order 
and light, to return with cash and experience. 



142 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

About two-thirds of the mid-century graduates 
had taught a winter school as part of their educa- 
tion. Shortened vacation and greater stringency 
in making up rendered this custom impracticable 
after about 1890. 

The first six weeks of the winter term were rich 
in mental food and 0, how lonesome; but there 
was escape by way of the conventional plea, 
^'necessity." For the faculty demanded necessity. 
And necessity was a relative matter depending on 
conditions. One form of necessity was to avoid 
calling on father for another check; another was 
to gather Experience, the grand qualification for 
two or three years of gainful teaching after grad- 
uation, and it was well known and encouraging to 
suppliants that certain members of the faculty 
looked with approval upon this form of necessity. 
And still another form of necessity was to secure 
the wherewithal for food until the summer hotels 
were ready. Much depended on definition, the 
respect of the applicant for the truth, and the 
mood of the excuser. No one had yet attained to 
the pleasant humor of the student who, at a later 
time when each professor excused absences, 
printed and distributed application blanks with 
''Reason: Sickness'' upon the whole edition. 

A second prerequisite for teaching a winter 
school was like that for cooking a rabbit — first 
catch your rabbit; first catch your school. Schools 
were caught from the inquiries of school boards 
addressed to some member of the faculty; such 
applications seldom found their way to novices, as 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 143 

the recipient invariably passed them along to ac- 
quaintances who had already gathered experi- 
ence. Or the discarded opportunities of better, 
that is of experienced, men were picked up : when 
a man had managed well his winter school it was 
usual to recognize a sort of reservation, the school 
holding the man and the man holding the school, 
without binding obligations in either case; then 
if the teacher secured a better paying school he 
considered himself both obliged and privileged 
to offer a substitute. And there remained the 
casual methods of writing, inquiring, and answer- 
ing advertisements. Supply and demand nearly 
balanced. It was generally understood about col- 
lege that getting a school was much more im- 
portant than teaching a school. It was held that 
with a little luck one could worry through and 
get his pay, notwithstanding the blood-curdling 
yarns which floated in from Cape Cod and other 
savage regions. 

At this time Mr. Whittier had preserved in 
S7102V Bound a poetical ideal of the pedagogue 
from Dartmouth's Classic Halls, which, while 
feeding local pride, caused wonder where he got 
it. And "Mary" (born Darius) Newman, 
pressed by the necessity of teaching for experi- 
ence, held the opinion that he met one of the poet's 
specifications, since, in a hairy generation, upon 
his features "scarce appeared the uncertain 
prophecy of beard." 

A first time is inevitable if it happens at all; 
and all experience has a beginning. So Mary, 



144 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

hereafter to be called Darius, engaged himself to 
a three-months school at $44 a month, with the 
drawback of $5 a week for room and board; 
travel and sundries were naturally at his own ex- 
pense. So he would have more experience than 
cash in the net return. By familiar modes of 
travel, with a stage coach for the end of the 
journey, he reached the corner of an often-men- 
tioned and now highly civilized town which had 
two nuclei of population, — West Hopeton and 
Hopeton Center, and which carried on the manu- 
facture of small articles of wood in the modest 
and comfortable New England fashion of many 
years ago. 

After being delivered at his pre-arranged 
boarding place in West Hopeton, Darius' first 
duty was to present himself to the chairman of 
the school board for examination, since without 
a certificate obtained by examination no one could 
be paid from the public money. According to in- 
structions he sought Jacob Nickleby in his gen- 
eral store in Hopeton Center. It was not Jacob's 
custom to talk unless he had something to say, so 
he made no comment on the apparent unfitness of 
the youthful Darius to master a winter school, 
of no uncommon turbulence, but which was 
certain to try any teacher out and to take the up- 
per hand of him if possible. He proceeded to his 
standard examination of five questions, to be an- 
swered by word of mouth, for shrewd old Jacob 
said that he could tell more from the way they an- 
swered than from what they said. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 145 
Grammar — Analyze and parse till I stop you : 

"To be or not to be, that is the question. — 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And, by opposing, end them?" 

History — Name all the presidents and vice- 
presidents of the United States. 

Geography — What states and territories are 
crossed by the 42d parallel? 

Arithmetic — Why do you invert the terms of 
a fraction in division? 

Pedagogy — (His pet question) — State your 
methods. 

The young collegian sadly messed his unpre- 
meditated answers, but you would have messed 
them too. Jacob Nickleby was silent for a time. 
Then he made some marks on the back of an 
envelope. He was an amiable dissembler, but he 
loved to pose, and to scare the college fellers. 

''Wal," he said at last, ''ye done about as well 
as I thought ye would." And having thus given 
evidence of his profundity he issued the certifi- 
cate. 

Darius' boarding place, while it gave him a new 
experience of family life, offered the great es- 
sentials of simplicity, comfort and kindness. Mr. 
Carrill was agent, manager and treasurer of a 
profitable little mill making broom-sticks; Mrs. 
Carrill was a notable house-keeper of the type 
that keeps house for the family and not the family 

*io 



146 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

for the house; Roger and Anna were their chil- 
dren, and Katy O'Brien was household helper and 
one of the family. Roger and Anna attended the 
high school at the Center, and Katy O'Brien had 
done with schooling; so the youthful teacher was 
under no strain to envelope himself in a cloud of 
dignity out of school. And the four young people 
played games and frolicked in the usual very 
youthful way. Darius helped on many an alge- 
braic puzzle and many a tangle in the language 
which Virgil picked out for the Aeneid, and now 
and then filled the wood-box for Katy when she 
was in a hurry with her soda biscuits. The house- 
hold became friendly to Darius. 

But teaching is an art ; and the management of 
a school is a game of skill; and Darius now dis- 
covered that he had neither the art nor the skill. 
In order to be taught the pupils must have at 
least some inclination to learn. And the simplest 
of all modes of management consists in inspiring 
a willingness to be managed. Big girls aware of 
their immunity from well-deserved strapping can 
simply emanate sauciness and rebellion. Little 
girls can stick out their tongues and giggle ir- 
repressibly and irresponsibly. Large, overgrown 
boys can trip one another in the aisles while their 
eyes roll innocently to heaven and their lips frame 
the words of their spelling lesson. And the small 
boys, falling into the mood of the occasion, can 
drop their slates on the floor, or land spit-balls on 
the blackboard when the teacher's back is turned. 
With the great girls as allies the school is nearly 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 147 

conquered, though the larger boys may have some 
affairs of their own to settle with the teacher first. 

When Darius Newman entered the little white 
one-room schoolhouse on the Monday morning, it 
seemed as though children by the hundred were 
playing tag and lifting up their voices in the 
room. By count forty pairs of eyes were directed 
upon him in the calm which followed his entrance, 
and their owners were prepared to be either 
friendly or hostile as might be determined later. 
He smiled — of course the well-known ''queer 
twisted smile" — but he had that feeling of being 
both the dinner and the after-dinner speaker. It 
was an ungraded school, and boys were there 
larger and heavier than himself, girls with their 
hair done in the latest mode, evidently young 
ladies after four o'clock, and children who 
scarcely could be expected to read. One of those 
great girls smiled at him; this was favorable. 
One of a group of large boys at the back of the 
room put forth an irresistible jest which Darius 
knew was at his expense although he could not 
hear it; and this was unfavorable. In some way 
— Darius never knew how — the school was or- 
ganized into just half as many classes as there 
were scholars in the school ; and as all the classes 
would not recite daily this allowed about twenty 
minutes for each class ; and three of the big girls, 
who for reasons of their own wished to begin 
Latin, had to recite after school on stated days. 

Days went by and the business of education did 
not run smoothly. Those great girls showed no 



148 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

preference for law and order; the large vealy 
youths were as impudent as they dared to be and 
were evidently looking for a chance to mutiny; 
and the little ones were mischievous and merry. 
The school was untamed. The run upon the water 
pail for a drink was too steady for a country 
where salt codfish was little used; there were too 
many imperative demands to go out; the larger 
girls would rise and leave the room without ask- 
ing, much to Darius' perplexity, as they were well 
aware that he lacked the assurance to put the 
usual question, ''Is it necessary?" Occasionally a 
book would be thrown across the room when his 
back was turned, or a piece of chalk dexterously 
snapped would hit him as he attempted to explain 
some problem at the blackboard, and when one of 
the big girls would engage his attention with 
some unnecessary question it was the occasion for 
snickering glee. Darius was himself contributing 
to the unhappy condition by over-sensitiveness to 
the unintended disorders of the room in seeing too 
much which a good teacher, knowing childish 
restlessness, manages not to see, and by undiluted 
rigor in the use of the recitation periods, which 
his desire to accommodate every one had made 
very short. 

The intellectual demands were not overtaxing 
after the start, but analysis and parsing done by 
the large girls with lightning tongues regardless 
of where they hit was something quaint and un- 
heard of. They could take the longest sentence 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 149 

and without pausing or faltering put every ele- 
ment into its place for better or worse, thus: 
"It is a compound declarative sentence of which 

the first member is and the second member 

is the logical subject of the first member is 

and the logical predicate is the sim- 
ple subject is and the simple predicate is 

the simple subject is modified by an 

adjective phrase consisting of " and so 

forth, just like that, without any stops, until every 
word had been put into its grammatical cell and 
the sentence was completely wrecked. It was 
marvelous. It was stupendous. And Darius was 
like the dog tied to the express train, until just 
by good luck he discovered that speed was cover- 
ing a multitude of sins. So he plunged into the 
verbal flood with a pointed correction; and that 
carried him through the hour. The next day he 
had mastered the scheme, but he was never quite 
able to keep up with the winged tongues. Who 
does analysis and parsing now? 

"Rhetoricals" once a week, the dreaded time of 
compositions and declamations, was opportunity 
for the maximum of disorder and insolence. 
Darius was too inexperienced in his business to 
know that all pieces to be spoken should have re- 
ceived his approval in advance. Consequently his 
audacious pupils made the occasion a glorious 
farce. 

On a memorable Friday the first speaker, with 
abnormal sobriety, delivered himself thus : 



150 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

"Fishy, fishy in the brook ; 
Bobby catcli him with a hook ; 
Mammy fry him in a pan, 
Bobby eat him like a man." 

And after the applause had subsided, his suc- 
cessor began with a grandiloquent voice but ended 
with the snick of a suppressed laugh at the back 
of his nose: 

"The thunder roared, 
The clouds grew big, 
And killed a pig." 

And the way now being clear, the next one gave 
evidence of collaboration with his predecessor by 
declaiming : 

"The thunder roared. 

The lightning crashed, 

And broke grandma's teapot all to smash." 

While the last speaker for the day, with a wink 
at the girls, and choking with his own humor at 
the end of each line, presented : 

"The rose is red. 
The violet is blue, 
The grass is green, 
And so are you." 

The truth was beginning to appear to Darius that 
those boys needed a licking, and he was a peace- 
ful person. Also several of the boys overtopped 
and outweighed him. 

Now the Carrill family knew that there was 
trouble in the school, without giving Darius a 
hint of their knowledge. They were his friends, 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 151 

but they could not fight his battles for him. Mr. 
Carrill was a man of influence in the town, and 
school committeeman Nickleby had said to him, 
'They're raising hell with that little college feller 
down to your place. I'll give him another week, 
and then he'll hev to go or they'll all be spiled." 
Mr. Carrill replied, ''He's young, and he's green, 
but I'll bet you a gallon of cider he gets them yet." 

Perhaps Darius would not have got them if they 
had not made the wrong move themselves. They 
laid their plans — five of them — and told the 
loungers in the adjacent store that they were sick 
of the teacher and were going to put him out. 
The store-keeper, who was looking for a little 
sport, said, "You better look out; maybe he bites." 

"Gosh," was the answer, "he wouldn't hurt a 
skeeter, and if he tried it any of us could lick 
him with one hand tied behind us." 

It only remained for the conspirators to hit 
upon something so utterly insubordinate that the 
teacher would be driven to action. 

And they did. 

As they were not subtly inventive they adopted 
the simple plan of hanging around the school 
door after the bell rang and coming in when they 
got ready, with self-conscious grins on their faces 
and defiant clumps of their boots on the floor. 
The quiet of the room was ominous. One of the 
lesser youths said afterwards, "You could have 
heard a gumdrop," which was probably facetious. 

Randolph Robinson, a sturdy, thick-headed and 
mischievous youth, had a seat in front where the 



152 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

teacher could watch him, but the other four, ac- 
cording to the enforced system of back seats for 
big boys, were grouped in the rear of the room. 

''Randolph," said the exasperated teacher, 
*'what does this mean?" 

''What does what mean?" was the irritating in- 
spiration of Randolph's kind of brains. 

"You come ^here," said Darius. 

Teacher was acting as expected, except that his 
voice didn't sound quite right. 

The chief movable properties of the school lay 
upon the teacher's table — a Testament and a few 
other books, a bell, a box of crayons, and a service- 
able ruler which Darius had mentally discarded 
as too brutal an implement for his pedagogic 
methods. He loved it now. 

Randolph Robinson sauntered a few steps 
closer, and the rest of the gang edged a little 
nearer to the aisle. They were going to do their 
part. The sturdy Randolph and the teacher with 
the practical ruler met in front of the table. 
Randolph, cunning for the advantage of the at- 
tack, sprang for a grapple without any warning. 
He missed his aim because of Darius' quickness 
upon his feet, but did secure a bull-dog grip upon 
the latter's left arm; and the four reserves 
jumped from their seats to finish the good work 
Randolph had so well begun. An impartial spec- 
tator would have had a vision of a vacant chair 
in the school room and a hole in the snow the size 
of the gentle teacher who did not believe in cor- 
poral punishment. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 153 

Darius had a stick, and in the letter which he 
afterwards wrote to his mother he expressed his 
everlasting thanks that it was not an ax, for it 
fell across the side of Randolph's head with a 
xylophonic clang, and blood gushed out and 
flowed over Randolph's face and down upon his 
collar. 

Four charging youths — they were only 
naughty boys — flashed from the aisle to their 
seats with the suddenness of a mouse-trap. 

Confusion reigned in the little room. The 
great girls moaned and cried, "Shame !" ''0, how 
horrid!" ''Aint it awful!" 'The brute!" The 
little girls sobbed. The boys who knew what they 
deserved assumed an apathy which covered cold 
feet. An unexpected tempest had broken loose. 
Little Millie Robinson, with eyes that flamed upon 
the teacher through their tears, led her wounded 
and bewildered brother from the room, and the 
rest followed, taking their most precious posses- 
sions with them. Never, never, would they go 
back to that old school again. Darius, for the 
moment unrepentant, was nevertheless aghast at 
his awful deed. He had ready none of the excuses 
which others would make for him. He did not 
know that breaking up a school was serious busi- 
ness, and that he had quelled a riot. He had hit 
a boy overhead with a stick, and even if he es- 
caped prison he would have to give up teaching 
and go away in disgrace. 

He could make a full confession to the chairman 
of the school board before he went. 



154 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

So with no delay he set forth on the two-mile 
walk to Hopeton Center and to the general store 
of Jacob Nickleby, self-conscious, and wondering 
all the way whether each one whom he met was 
informed of the scandal and aware of his impend- 
ing disgrace. With breath shortened by his hasty 
walk and by his inward disturbance he gave to 
Jacob Nickleby, keen-eyed and silent, the whole 
gloomy story. 

Jacob made no haste to reply. He whittled a 
stick ; he made a well-centered shot at the box of 
saw-dust; he shifted his cud to the other cheek. 

''Wal," he said slowly, "ye done jest right." 

'"What," said Darius, who could not believe his 
ears. 

**Ye done jest right; now go back and make 
them young ones step around." Jacob was a 
sound but not wasteful talker, and he terminated 
the interview at this point. ''Cost me a gallon 
of cider," he remarked to himself, "but I guess 
it's wuth it." 

The news from the school had reached Mr. 
Carrill's before Darius came in, but he was com- 
pelled to tell it all over — to the motherly Mrs. 
Carrill, to the former school committeeman, to 
Anna who was young enough to make it no secret 
that she was for him, to Katy O'Brien who de- 
clared that she would "give it" to her brother 
Michael for being mixed up in the affair, and to 
Roger. All manifestly rejoiced except Roger, 
who, recently the natural enemy of all school 
teachers but now somewhat reconciled to their 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 155 

existence, thought it dignified to hide his satis- 
faction. There was a chicken supper that night 
with some of Mrs. Carrill's own special spiced 
rhubarb and Katy O'Brien's Washington pie. As 
the family warmed up in their talk Darius was 
amazed to learn how complete was their knowl- 
edge of the situation and of the actors. 

''That Randolph Robinson deserved all he got," 
said Mrs. Carrill. ''Last winter he worried a real 
nice teacher, who didn't have good discipline, 
out of school." 

"Well, he comes by it naturally," added Mr. 
Carrill. "His father is an ugly customer. In 
fact he is the only thing I am doubtful about; 
he may try to make trouble. But don't you 
worry, we'll stop him." 

"There'll be some fun at the store tonight," was 
Roger's contribution. And after supper both he 
and his father went out. 

When they came back they reported that Ran- 
dolph was not hurt enough to mention, and 
seemed proud of the bandage his mother had tied 
around his head. The other boys had come into 
the store and had taken the jokes on them as good 
medicine. And there was no more question of 
the propriety and timeliness of Darius' stroke 
than if he had made a home run in the new game 
of baseball. Darius wrote to his mother about it 
all, and went to bed much happier than he had 
expected. But he was still very doubtful whether 
he would have any scholars in the morning. 

Six inches of snow fell in the night, softening 



156 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

the coarse and ragged edges of the country-side 
to sweet curves. And now the facets of the tiny 
crystals glittered and sparkled and dazzled in the 
brilliant morning sun. The smokey steam rose 
straight from the chimneys and gradually van- 
ished against the indigo sky. 

As Darius approached the schoolhouse he could 
see forms about the door. Some had come after 
all. They seemed to be busy with some work. 
Wonderful ! Four or five of the larger boys were 
making a path from the steps of the school down 
to the sidewalk. They grinned as the teacher 
came up. The pupils were assembling with quiet 
sociability. Randolph Robinson came in, un- 
abashed, but very conscious of his cotton crown. 
Darius dropped a book from the table and Ran- 
dolph picked it up. There was good stuff in Ran- 
dolph, and if he had been a little older and en- 
gaged in a righteous cause it would have taken 
more than a cracked head to tame him. But the 
store had been heard from; and also Daddy Rob- 
inson who cherished a concealed ambition to make 
a man of Randolph. His surprising comment 
upon the collision of Darius' ruler with Ran- 
dolph's head was, ''If the teacher can't lick my 
boy I'll come in school and help him." Even the 
big sixteen-year-old girls, who had called the 
teacher a brute only a few hours before, smilingly 
said, ''Good morning" as they replaced in their 
desks pencils, sponges and little bottles of water, 
the use of which upon their slates was considered 
more elegant than spitting. 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 157 

The school had decided to behave properly. 

As soon as the teacher had shown signs of 
vigor the parents had said something to their 
children. And the children with a new point of 
view had thought they might like the teacher 
after all. Intentional insubordination and 
malicious tricks ceased, though youthful impulses 
did not lose their freshness. Darius had no oc- 
casion to strike another blow during the remain- 
ing ten weeks of school. 

So in cheerful humor he could join in the 
sprightly social life of the little village. 

Before long the pond was cleared for skating, 
and this gave Darius the chance to put his best 
foot foremost. He skated impartially with his 
own girls, big and little, and with Anna's high 
school friends; and between times showed off a 
trifle with the outer edge forward and backward, 
the figure eight, and the single and double grape- 
vine; and when the boys chose up for shinney 
Darius' name led all the rest. On the bright 
nights Roger Carrill pulled out the double-runner 
which carried eight if rightly loaded — and bash- 
fulness was not allowed — to dash down one-mile 
hill with breathless speed and harmless hazards, 
though occasional squeal-marked overturns dis- 
closed white garments in the light of the moon. 
And afterwards doughnuts, popcorn and cider by 
the open fire. 

And though Darius was no singer, unless he 
was in a crowd, they made him join the singing- 
school on Saturday nights, because it was the 



158 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

great social event of the week for young and old. 
They chatted while the vacant places filled, until 
the ''conductor," who was choir-master too, 
tapped on his music stand with the gutta percha 
wand. Then through their faith in him there 
came a breath of inspiration; for he had the 
artist's soul though he was an operative in the 
shoe-peg factory by day. He bit his little tuning- 
fork, — um, um, um, do, do, — everybody sound 

— louder, louder, — that's better — now take 
your parts, do, mi, sol — page thirteen, sing by 
note — sol, sol, do, do, sol, sol, do, do, — all ready, 
one, two, three, sing — Scotland's burning Scot- 
land's burning ; loo kout, loo kout ; fi-er, fi-er, fi-er, 
fi-er; pour on water, pour on water. Why, how 
well it went! And all mixed up too. And after 
the laugh was over they did it again, so loud this 
time that the fire brigade would have been out 
with the old tub if nearly all its members had not 
been singing and laughing themselves. When 
they had all cleared their throats and maybe slip- 
ped in a bit of lozenger they tackled those hearty 
old fugueing tunes : Bridgewater, Rainbow, 
Victory, Fly like a youthful hart or roe. Over the 
hills where spices (some said spiders) grow; then 
a minor. How vain are all things here below. How 
false and yet how fair ! — Dr. Watts took such a 
gloomy view of life just because of a jilting girl. 

— And by and by they paired off and went home, 
and said good-night on the door-step in the good 
old proper way. 

Darius found the evening parties, which were 



Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 159 

numerous after the establishment of law and 
order, pleasant but precarious. He soon learned 
to name an apple shrewdly for "One I love; two 
I love ; three I love I say ; four I love with all my 
heart; and five I cast away—" He could throw 
the long apple paring over his left shoulder, and 
let someone else who was always ready tell the 
letter. No one could catch him in philopena, 
*'yes or no," or ''give or take," unless he thought 
it good judgment to be caught. But the kissing 
games called for cautious diplomacy. In ''Clap 
in and clap out" he could generally involve some 
harmless little miss. But in Copenhagen it 
seemed as though the large girls were too easily 
caught; and when in Post Office, "Three letters 
for Mr. Newman" was called out it made him 
blush. Most of the big girls of his school were 
present, and it seemed indiscreet to be kissing 
them at parties when he might have to point out 
errors in their spelling the next day. But the 
local etiquette supported him, and no one minded 
if the kisses were distributed fairly. Here in 
West Hopeton, as in many places not so rural, 
there was "pairing off" from twelve years old and 
upwards; and every one knew that Jane "went 
with" John and Bess with Bill, and to interfere 
with any pair was cause of bitterness. But 
Darius was the lad that on these occasions put 
the prude into prudence and so carefully dispersed 
his favors that if any girl had been omitted her 
steady company wondered what was the matter 
with her, until her turn came round. 



160 Dartmouth Book of Remembrance 

So the winter quickly passed. 

On the last day when the Exhibition came off 
the scholars all sat ''in position" and sang 
''Lightly Row," "Home Again," "The Swanee 
Ribber," and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," 
which was very new then. The minister made a 
prayer. The boys declaimed real pieces; the girls 
read compositions from blue-ribboned manu- 
scripts. All the scholars united to present their 
teacher with beautiful boxes to hold his collars 
and detachable cuffs. The big girls shyly pre- 
sented their autograph albums for Darius' name 
and "something nice." And Millie Randolph and 
some of the other little girls shed a tear or two 
of real sorrow at the parting. 



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